'HE  SOUT 


RICAN 


3LIVE  SCHRE 


THE  UBKARY 
BW.VERSITY  OF 

LOS  ANGELES 


OF  CALIF.  LIBRARY,  LOB  ANGELES 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN 
QUESTION 


BY 

AN  ENGLISH  SOUTH  AFRICAN 

(Olive  Schreiner) 

AUTHOR  OF  "THE  STORY  OF  AN  AFRICAN 
FARM,"  "DREAMS,"  ETC 


CHICAGO 

CHARLES  H.  SERGEL  COMPANY 
1899 


Copyright,  1899,  by  Olive  Schreiner. 


"  Then  let  us  pray  that  come  it  may, 

As  come  it  will  for  a1  that; 
That  truth  and  worth,  o'er  a'  the  earth, 

May  bear  the  gree,  and  a'  that; 
For  a'  that,  and  a'  that; 

IPs  coming  yet,  for  a'  that; 
That  man  to  man,  the  world  o'er, 
Shall  brothers  be  for  a'  that." 

******** 

"Put  up  thy  sword:  they  that  hold  the  sword 
shall  perish  by  the  sword." 


THE    SOUTH    AFRICAN 
QUESTION. 


Many  views  have  found  expression 
in  the  columns  of  papers  during  the  last 
weeks.  The  working  man  only  a  few 
weeks  or  months  from  England  has  ex- 
pressed his  opposition  to  those  strata- 
gems with  war  for  their  aim  which 
would  leave  him  without  the  defence 
he  has  at  present  from  the  pressure  of 
employers.  Journalists  only  a  few  years, 
months,  or  weeks  from  Europe,  have 
written,  not  perhaps  expressing  a  de- 
sire for  war,  but  implying  it  might  be 
well  if  the  wave  swept  across  South 
Africa,  and  especially  across  that  por- 
tion which  is  richest  in  mineral  wealth, 
and,  therefore,  more  to  be  desired. 

5 


6  THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 

South  Africans  and  men  from  Europe 
alike  have  written  deprecating  war,  be- 
cause of  the  vast  suffering  and  loss  it 
would  occasion  to  individuals.  Dutch 
and  English  South  Africans  have  writ- 
ten (as  one  in  an  able  and  powerful  let- 
ter dated  from  Vrededorp,  which  ap- 
peared a  few  days  ago)  proving  the 
injustice  that  would  be  inflicted  on  the 
people  of  Africa,  the  violation  of 
treaties  and  trust.  But,  amid  all  this 
chorus  of  opinion  there  is  one  voice 
which,  though  heard,  has  not  yet  been 
heard  with  that  distinctness  and  fulness 
which  its  authority  demands — it  is  the 
voice  of  the  African-born  Englishman 
who  loves  England,  the  man  who,  born 
in  South  Africa,  and  loving  it  as  all 
men,  who  are  men,  love  their  birth- 
land,  is  yet  an  Englishman,  bound  to 
England  not  only  by  ties  of  blood,  but 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.  7 

that  much  more  intense  passion  which 
springs  from  personal  contact  alone. 
Our  position  is  unique,  and  it  would 
seem  that  we  are  marked  out,  at  the 
present  juncture  of  South  African  af- 
fairs, for  an  especial  function,  which 
imposes  on  us,  at  whatever  cost  to  our- 
selves, the  duty  of  making  our  voices 
heard  and  taking  our  share  in  the  life 
of  our  two  nations,  at  their 

MOST  CRITICAL  JUNCTURE. 

For,  let  us  consider  what  exactly 
our  position  is. 

Born  in  South  Africa,  our  eyes  first 
opened  on  these  African  hills  and 
plains;  around  us,  of  other  parentage 
but  born  with  us  in  the  land,  our  birth- 
fellows,  were  men  of  another  white 
race ;  and  we  grew  up  side  by  side  with 
them.  Is  it  strange  that,  like  all  men 


8  THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 

living,  who  have  the  hearts  of  men,  we 
learnt  to  love  this  land  in  which  we 
first  saw  light?  In  after  years,  when 
we  left  it,  and  lived  months  or  years 
across  the  seas,  is  it  strange  we  carried 
it  with  us  in  our  hearts?  When  we 
stood  on  the  Alps  and  looked  down  on 
the  lakes  and  forests  of  Switzerland, 
that  we  have  said,  "This  is  fair,  but 
South  Africa  to  us  is  fairer?"  That 
when  on  the  top  of  Milan  Cathedral 
and  we  have  looked  out  across  the  wide 
plains  of  Lombardy,  we  have  said, 
"This  is  noble ;  but  nobler  to  us  are  the 
broad  plains  of  Africa,  with  their 
brown  kopjes  shimmering  in  the  trans- 
lucent sunshine?"  Is  it  strange  that 
when,  after  long  years  of  absence,  years 
it  may  be  of  success  and  the  joy  which 
springs  from  human  fellowship  and 
youth,  our  ship  has  cast  its  anchor  in 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.  9 

sight  of  Table  Bay,  and  the  great  front 
of  Table  Mountain  has  reared  up  be- 
fore us,  a  cry  of  passionate  joy  has 
welled  up  within  us ;  and  when  we  saw 
the  black  men  with  their  shining  skins 
unloading  in  the  docks,  and  the  rugged 
faces  of  South  Africans,  browned  with 
our  African  sun,  we  put  our  foot  on 
the  dear  old  earth  again,  and  our  hearts 
have  cried :  "We  are  South  Africans ! 
We  have  come  back  again  to  our  land 
and  to  our  people?"  Is  it  strange  that 
when  we  are  in  other  lands  and  we  fear 
that  death  approaches  us,  we  say: 
"Take  me  back!  We  may  live  away 
from  her,  but  when  we  are  dead  we 
must  lie  on  her  breast.  Bury  us  among 
the  kopjes  where  we  played  when  we 
were  children,  and  let  the  iron  stones 
and  red  sand  cover  us?"  Is  it  strange 
that  wherever  we  live  we  all  want  to 


10          THB  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 

go  home  to  die ;  and  that  the  time  comes 
when  we  know  that  dearer  far  to  us 
than  fame  or  success  is  one  little  hand- 
ful of  our  own  red  South  African 
earth  ?  Is  it  strange  that,  when  the 

TIME  OF   STRESS  AND  D4NGER 

comes  to  our  land,  we  realize  what,  per- 
haps, we  were  but  dimly  conscious  of 
before,  that  we  are  Africans,  that  for 
this  land  and  people  we  could  live — if 
need  be,  we  could  die  ? 

Is  it  strange  we  should  feel  this? 
The  Scotchman  feels  it  for  his  heathery 
hills,  the  Swiss  for  his  valleys.  All 
men  who  are  men  feel  it  for  the  land 
of  their  birth ! 

What  is  strange  is  not  that  we  have 
this  feeling,  but  that,  side  by  side  with 
it,  we  have  another.  We  love  Africa, 
but  we  love  England  also.  It  if  aot 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.          11 

merely  that  when  for  the  first  time  we 
visit  the  old  nesting  place  of  our  peo- 
ple it  is  rich  for  us  with  associations, 
that  we  tread  it  for  the  first  time  with 
something  of  the  awe  and  reverence 
with  which  men  tread  an  old  cathe- 
dral, rich  with  remains  of  the  great 
dead  and  past;  it  is  not  merely  that 
the  associations  of  language  and  liter- 
ature bind  us  to  it,  nor  that  in  some 
city  or  country  churchyard  we  stand 
beside  the  graves  of  our  forefathers, 
and  trace  on  mould-eaten  stones  the 
names  we  have  been  familiar  with  in 
Africa,  and  bear  as  our  own;  nor  is  it 
that  we  can  linger  yet  on  the  steps  of 
the  church  where  our  parents  were 
united  before  they  moved  to  the  far 
South,  and  made  of  us  South  Afri- 
cans. Beyond  all  these  impersonal, 
and  more  or  less  intellectual  ties,  we 


12         THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 

form  a  personal  one  with  England. 
Whether  we  have  gone  home  as  stu- 
dents to  college  or  university,  or  for 
purposes  of  art,  literature,  or  profes- 
sional labor,  as  time  passes  there 
springs  up  around  us 

A  NETWORK  OF  TENDER  BONDS; 

there  are  formed  the  closest  friendships 
our  hearts  will  ever  know,  such  as  are 
formed  only  in  the  spring  time  of  life ; 
there  is  gained  our  first  deep  knowledge 
of  life,  and  there  grow  up  within  us 
passions  and  modes  of  thought  we  will 
carry  with  us  to  our  graves.  After 
years,  it  may  be  after  many  years,  when 
we  return,  on  the  walls  of  our  study  in 
South  Africa  we  still  keep  fastened  in 
memory  of  the  past  the  old  oar  with 
which  we  won  our  first  boating  victory 
on  Cam  or  Thames;  and  the  faces  of 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.          13 

the  men  who  shared  our  victory  with 
us  still  look  down  at  us  from  our  walls. 
Not  dearer  to  any  Englishman  is  the 
memory  of  his  Alma  Mater  than  to  him 
who  sits  thousands  of  miles  off  in  the 
South,  and  who,  as  he  smokes  his  last 
pipe  of  African  Boer  or  Transvaal  to- 
bacco, is  visited  often  by  memories  of 
days  that  will  never  fade,  evenings  OH 
the  river  with  bright  faces  and  soft 
voices,  long  midnight  conclaves  over 
glimmering  fires,  when,  with  voices  and 
hearts  as  young  and  glowing  as  our 
own,  we  discussed  all  problems  of  the 
universe  and  longed  to  go  out  into  life 
that  we  might  settle  them — they  come 
back  to  us  with  all  the  glitter  and  light 
which  hangs  only  about  the  remem- 
brances of  youth :  and  for  many  of  us 
the  memory  of  fog-smitten  London  is 
inextricably  blended  with  the  all  pro- 


14        THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 

foundest  emotions,  the  most  passionate 
endeavors,  noblest  relations  our  hearts 
will  ever  know.  The  steamers  that 
come  weekly  to  South  Africa  are  not 
for  us  merely  vessels  bringing  news 
from  foreign  lands ;  nor  do  they  merely 
bring  for  us  the  intellectual  pabulum 
which  feeds  our  mental  life ;  they  bring 
us 

"NEWS  FROM  HOME." 

In  London  houses,  in  country  cottages, 
in  English  manufacturing  towns,  are 
men  and  women  whose  life  and  labor, 
whose  joy  and  sorrows  our  hearts  will 
follow  to  the  end,  as  theirs  will  follow 
ours  to  the  end,  and  across  the  seas  our 
hands  will  always  be  interknit  with 
theirs.  Our  labor,  our  homes,  our  ma- 
terial interests,  may  all  be  in  South 
Africa,  but  a  bond  of  love  so  strong 
that  six  thousand  miles  of  sea  can  only 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.          15 

stretch  it,  but  never  sever  it,  binds  us 
to  the  land  and  the  friends  we  loved  in 
our  youth.  We  are  South  Africans, 
but  intellectual  sympathies,  habits,  per- 
sonal emotions,  have  made  us  strike 
deep  roots  across  the  sea;  and  when 
the  thought  flashes  on  us,  we  may  not 
walk  the  old  streets  again  or  press  the 
old  hands,  pain  rises  which  those  only 
know  whose  hearts  are  divided  between 
two  lands.  We  are  South  Africans, 
but  we  are  not  South  Africans  only — 
we  are  Englishmen  also: 

Dear  little  Island, 
Our  heart  in  the  sea! 

If  to-morrow  hostile  fleets  encompassed 
England,  and  the  tread  of  foreign 
troops  was  on  her  soil,  she  would  not 
need  to  call  to  us ;  we  would  stand  be- 
side her  before  she  had  spoken.  This  is 


16          THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 
OUR   EXACT    POSITION. 

Side  by  side  with  us  in  South  Africa 
are  other  South  Africans  whose  posi- 
tion is  not  and  cannot  be  exactly  what 
ours  is.  Shading  away  from  us  by  im- 
perceptible degrees,  stand,  on  one  side 
of  us,  those  English  South  Africans 
who,  racially  English,  yet  know  noth- 
ing or  little  personally  of  her;  the 
grandparents,  and  not  the  parents  of 
such  men,  have  left  England;  they  are 
proud  of  being  Englishmen,  proud  of 
England's  great  record  and  great 
names,  as  a  man  is  proud  of  his  grand- 
mother's family,  but  they  are  before  all 
things  essentially  South  African.  They 
desire  to  see  England  increase  and  pro- 
gress, and  to  remain  in  harmony  and 
union  with  her  while  she  does  not  in- 
terfere with  internal  affairs  of  South 
Africa,  but  they  do  not  and  cannot  feel 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.          17 

to  her  as  those  of  us  do  whose  love  is 
personal  and  whose  intellectual  sym- 
pathies center  largely  in  England. 

Yet  further  from  us  on  the  same  side 
stand  our  oldest  white  fellow  South 
Africans ;  who  were,  many,  not  of  Eng- 
lish blood  originally,  though  among 
that  body  of  early  white  settlers,  men 
who  preceded  us  in  South  Africa  by 
three  centuries,  were  a  few  with  Eng- 
lish names,  and  though  by  intermar- 
riage Dutch  and  English  South  Afri- 
cans are  daily  and  hourly  blending,  the 
bulk  of  these  folk  were  Dutchmen  from 
Holland  and  Friesland,  with  a  few 
Swedes,  Germans  and  Danes,  and  later 
was  intermingled  with  them  a  strong 
strain  of  Huguenot  blood  from  France. 
These  men  were  mainly  of  that  folk 
which,  in  the  sixteenth  century,  held 
Philip  and  the  Spanish  Empire  at  bay, 


18         THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION, 

and  struck  the  first  death-blow  into  the 
heart  of  that  mighty  Imperial  system 
whose  death-gasp  we  have  witnessed 
to-day.  A  brave,  free,  fearless  folk 
with  the 

BLOOD  OF  THE  OLD  SEA  KINGS 

in  their  veins;  a  branch  of  that  old 
Teutonic  race  which  came  with  the 
Angles  and  Saxons  into  England  and 
subdued  the  Britons,  and  who,  in  the 
persons  of  the  Franks,  entered  Gaul, 
and  spread  its  blood  across  Europe. 
They  are  a  people  most  nearly  akin  to 
the  English  of  all  European  folk,  in 
language,  form  and  feature  resembling 
them,  and  in  a  certain  dogged  persist- 
ence, and  an  inalienable  indestructible 
air  of  personal  freedom. 

Even  under  the  early  Dutch  Govern- 
ment of  the  East  India  Company,  they 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.  19 

were  not  always  restful  and  resented 
interference  and  external  control.  They 
frequently  felt  themselves  *  "onder- 
gedrukt,"  and,  taking  their  guns,  and 
getting  together  wife  and  children  and 
all  that  they  had,  and  inspanning  their 
wagons,  they  f  trekked  away  from  the 
scant  boards  of  civilization  into  the 
wilderness,  to  form  homes  of  freedom 
for  themselves  and  their  descendants. 
In  1795  England  obtained  the  Cape 
as  the  result  of  European  complica- 
tions, and  the  South  African  people, 
without  request  or  desire  on  their  part, 
were  given  over  to  England.  England 
retired  from  the  Cape  in  1803,  but,  ow- 
ing to  other  changes  in  Europe,  she 
took  the  Cape  again  in  1806,  and  has 
since  then  been  the 

*Ondergedrukt — oppressed. 
tTrekked — moved,  traveled. 


20          THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 
GUARDIAN  OF  OUR  SEAS, 

and  the  strongest  power  in  our  land. 
Since  that  time,  for  the  last  ninety 
years,  Englishmen  have  slowly  been 
added  to  the  population,  but  the  men 
of  Dutch  descent  still  form  the  major- 
ity of  white  South  Africans  through- 
out the  Cape  Colony,  Free  State,  and 
Transvaal,  outnumbering  at  the  pres- 
ent day,  even  with  the  accession  of  the 
foreigners  (Uitlanders  mean  foreign- 
ers in  Dutch)  to  the  goldfields  of  the 
Transvaal,  those  of  English  descent, 
as  probably  about  two  to  one. 

So  we  of  England  became  step- 
mother to  this  South  African  people. 
We  English  are  a  virile  race.  There  is 
perhaps  no  one  with  a  drop  of  English 
blood  in  his  veins  who  does  not  feel 
pride  in  that  knowledge.  We  are  a 
brave  and,  for  ourselves,  a  freedom- 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.  21 

loving  race ;  the  best  of  us  have  nobler 
qualities  yet — we  love  justice;  we  ad- 
mire courage  and  the  love  of  freedom 
in  others  as  well  as  ourselves;  and  we 
find  it  difficult  to  put  our  foot  on  the 
weak,  it  refuses  to  go  down.  At  times, 
whether  as  individuals  or  as  a  nation, 
.we  are  capable  of  the 

MOST  HEROIC  MORAL  ACTION. 

The  heart  swells  with  pride  when  we 
remember  what  has  been  done  by  Eng- 
lishmen, at  different  times  and  in  differ- 
ent places,  in  the  cause  of  freedom  and 
justice,  when  they  could  meet  with  no 
reward  and  had  nothing  to  gain.  Such 
an  act  of  justice  on  the  part  of  the  Eng- 
lish nation  was  done  in  1881  when 
Gladstone  gave  back  to  the  Transvaal 
the  independence  which  had  been  mis- 
takenly taken.  I  would  not  say  policy 


22         THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 

had  no  part  in  the  action  of  the  wise 
old  man.  No  doubt  that  keen  eagle- 
eye  had  fixed  itself  closely  on  the  truth 
which  all  history  teaches  that  a  colony 
of  Teutonic  folk  cannot  be  kept  per- 
manently in  harmony  and  union  with 
the  Mother  Country  by  any  bond  but 
that  of  love,  mutual  sympathy  and 
honor.  The  child  may  be  reduced  by 
force  to  obedience ;  but  time  passes  and 
the  child  becomes  a  youth;  the  youth 
may  be  coerced;  but  the  day  comes 
when  the  youth  becomes  a  man,  and 
there  can  be  no  coercion  then.  If  the 
mother  wishes  to  retain  the  affection  of 
the  man,  she  must  win  it  from  the 
youth.  This  the  wise  old  man  saw ;  but 
I  believe  that,  over  and  above  the  wis- 
dom, he  saw  the  right,  and  the  action 
was  no  less  heroic  because  it  was  wise; 
for  other  men  see  truth  who  have  not 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.  23 

the  courage  to  follow  her,  and  accept 
present  loss  for  a  gain  which  lies 
across  the  centuries. 

We  English  are  a  fearless  folk,  and 
in  the  main  I  think  we  seek  after  jus- 
tice, but  we  have  our  faults.  We  are 
not  a  sympathetic  or  a  quickly  com- 
prehending people ;  we  are  slow  and  we 
are  proud ;  we  are  shut  in  by  a  certain 

SHELL  OF  HARD  RESERVE. 

There  are  probably  few  of  us  who  have 
not  some  consciousness  of  this  defect  in 
our  own  persons;  it  may  be  a  fault  al- 
lied to  our  highest  virtues,  but  it  is  a 
fault,  and  a  serious  one  as  regards  our 
relations  with  peoples  who  come  under 
our  rule.  We  may  and  do  generally 
sincerely  desire  justice;  we  may  have 
no  wish  to  oppress,  but  we  do  not  read- 
ily understand  wants  and  conditions 


24         THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 

distinct  from  our  own.  Here  and  there 
great  Englishmen  have  appeared  in 
South  African  history  as  elsewhere 
(such  as  Sir  William  Porter  and  Sir 
George  Grey)  who  have  been  able  to 
throw  themselves  sympathetically  into 
the  entire  life  of  the  people  about,  to 
love  them,  and  so  to  comprehend  their 
wants  and  win  their  affections.  Such 
men  are  the  burning  and  shining  lights 
of  our  Imperial  and  Colonial  system, 
but  they  are  not  common.  Undoubted- 
ly the  officials  sent  out  to  rule  the  Cape 
in  the  old  days  were  generally  men  who 
earnestly  desired  to  do  their  duty;  but 
they  did  not  always  understand  the  folk 
they  had  to  rule.  They  were  generally 
simple  soldiers,  brave,  fearless  and  hon- 
orable as  the  English  soldier  is  apt  to 
be,  but  with  hard  military  conceptions 
of  government  and  discipline.  Our 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.          25 

Dutch  fellow  South  Africans  are  a 
strange  folk.  Virile,  resolute,  pas- 
sionate with  a  passion  hid  far  below  the 
surface,  they  are  at  once  the  gentlest 
and  the  most  determined  of  peoples. 
When  you  try  to  coerce  them  they  are 
hard  as  steel  encased  in  iron,  but  with  a 
large  and  generous  response  to  affec- 
tion and  sympathy  which  perhaps  no 
other  European  folk  gives.  They  may 
easily  be  deceived  once ;  but  never  twice. 
Under  the  roughest  exterior  of  the  up- 
country  Boer  lies  a  nature  strangely 
sensitive  and  conscious  of  personal 
dignity ;  a  people  who  never  forgets  a 
kindness  and  does 

NOT    EASILY    FORGET   A    WRONG. 

Our  officials  did  not  always  under- 
stand them;  they  made  no  allowances 
for  a  race  of  brave,  free  men  inhabiting 


26          THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 

a  country  which  by  the  might  of  their 
own  right  hand  they  had  won  from  sav- 
ages and  wild  beasts,  and  who  were 
given  over  into  the  hands  of  a  strange 
government  without  their  consent  or 
desire ;  and  the  peculiarities  which  arose 
from  their  wild  free  life  were  not  al- 
ways sympathetically  understood ;  even 
their  little  language,  the  South  African 
"Taal,"  a  South  African  growth  so 
dear  to  their  hearts,  and  to  all  those  of 
us  who  love  indigenous  and  South 
African  growths,  was  not  sympathet- 
ically and  gently  dealt  with.  The 
men,  well  meaning,  but  military,  tried 
with  this  fierce,  gentle,  sensitive,  free 
folk  force,  where  they  should  have  ex- 
ercised a  broad  and  comprehensive 
humanity;  and  when  they  did  right  (as 
when  the  slaves  were  freed),  they  did 
it  often  in  such  manner,  that  it  became 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.  27 

practically  wrong.  A  little  of  that  tact 
of  the  higher  and  larger  kind,  which 
springs  from  a  human  comprehension 
of  another's  difficulties  and  needs, 
might,  exercised  in  the  old  days,  have 
saved  South  Africa  from  all  white- 
race  problems;  it  was  not,  perhaps  un- 
der the  conditions,  could  not,  be  exer- 
cised. The  people's  hearts  ached  under 
the  uncompromising  iron  rule.  In  1815 
there  was  a  rising,  and  it  was  put  down. 
As  the  traveler  passes  by  train  along 
the  railway  from  Port  Elizabeth  to 
Kimberley,  he  will  come,  a  few  miles 
beyond  Cookhouse,  to  a  gap  between 
two  hills;  to  his  right  flows  the  Fish 
River ;  to  his  left,  binding  the  two  hills, 
is  a  ridge  of  land  called  in  South  Africa 
a  "nek."  It  is  a  spot  the  thoughtful 
Englishman  passes  with  deep  pain.  In 
the  year  1815  here  were  hanged  five 


28          THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 

South  Africans  who  had  taken  part  in 
the  rising,  and  the  women  who  had 
fought  beside  them  (for  the  South 
African  woman  has  ever  stood  beside 
the  man  in  all  his  labors  and  struggles) 
were  compelled  to  stand  by  and  look  on. 
The  crowd  of  fellow  South  Africans 
who  stood  by  them  believed, 

HOPED  AGAINST  HOPE, 

to  the  last  moment,  that  a  reprieve 
would  come.  Lord  Charles  Somerset 
sent  none,  and  the  tragedy  was  com- 
pleted. The  place  is  called  to-day 
"Schlachter's  Nek,"  or  "Butcher's 
Ridge."  Every  South  African  child 
knows  the  story.  Technically,  any  gov- 
ernment has  the  right  to  hang  those 
who  rise  against  its  rule.  Superficially 
it  is  a  short  way  of  ending  a  difficulty 
for  all  governments.  Historically  it 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.          29 

has  often  been  found  to  be  the  method 
for  perpetrating  them.  We  may  sub- 
merge for  a  moment  that  which  rises 
again  more  formidably  for  its  blood 
bath.  The  mistake  made  by  Lord 
Charles  Somerset  in  1815  was  as  the 
mistake  would  have  been  by  President 
Kruger  if,  in  1896,  instead  of  exercis- 
ing the  large  prerogative  of  mercy  and 
magnanimity,  he  had  destroyed  the 
handful  of  conspirators  who  attempted 
to  destroy  the  State.  Both  would  have 
been  within  their  legal  right,  but  the 
Transvaal  would  have  failed  to  find 
that  path  which  runs  higher  than  the 
path  of  mere  law  and  leads  towards 
light.  Fortunately  for  South  Africa 
our  little  Republic  found  it. 

The  reign  of  stern  military  rule  at 
the  Cape  had  this  effect,  that  men  and 
women,  with  a  sore  in  their  proud 


30          THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 

hearts,  continued  to  move  away  from 
a  controlling  power  that  did  not  under- 
stand them.  Some  moved  across  the 
Orange  River  and  joined  the  old 
"Voortrekkers"  that  had  already  gone 
into  that  country  which  is  now  the  Free 
State.  England  kept  a  certain  virtual 
sovereignty  over  that  territory,  till,  in 
1854,  she  grew  weary  of  the  expense 
it  cost  her,  and  withdrew  from  it  in 
spite  of  the  representations  of  certain 
of  its  inhabitants  who  sent  a  deputation 
to  England  to  request  her  to  retain  it. 
Thereupon  the  folk  organized  an  inde- 
pendent State  and  Government ;  and  the 
little  land,  peopled  mainly  by  men  of 
Dutch  descent,  but  largely  intermingled 
with  English  who  lived  with  them  on 
terms  of  the  greatest  affection  and 
unity,  has  become  one  of  the  most 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.         31 

PROSPEROUS,        WELL-GOVERNED        AND 
PEACEFUL 

communities  on  earth.  Others,  much 
the  larger  part  of  the  people,  moved 
further;  they  crossed  the  Vaal  River, 
and  in  that  wild  northern  land,  where 
no  Englishman's  foot  had  passed,  they 
founded  after  some  years  the  gallant 
little  Republic  we  all  know  to-day  as 
the  Transvaal.  How  that  Republic 
was  founded  is  a  story  we  all  know. 
Alone,  unbacked  by  any  great  Im- 
perial or  national  power,  with  their  old 
flint-lock  guns  in  their  hands  as  their 
only  weapons,  with  wife  and  children, 
they  passed  into  that  yet  untrodden 
land.  The  tefi-ible  story  of  their  strug- 
gles, the  death  of  Piet  Retief  and  his 
brave  followers,  killed  by  treachery  by 
the  Zulu  Chief,  Dingaan,  the  victory  of 
the  survivors  over  him,  which  is  still 


32          THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 

commemorated  by  their  children  as 
Dingaan's  Day,  the  whole,  perhaps,  the 
most  thrilling  record  of  the  struggle 
and  suffering  of  a  people  in  founding 
their  State  that  the  world  can  any- 
where produce.  Paul  Kruger  can  still 
remember  howr,  after  that  terrible  fight, 
women  and  children  left  alone  in  the 
fortified  laager,  he  himself  being  but  a 
child,  they  carried  on  bushes  to  fortify 
the  laager,  women  with  children  in 
their  arms,  or  pregnant,  laboring  with 
strength  of  men  to  entrench  themselves 
against  evil  worse  than  death.  Here  in 
the  wilderness  they  planted  their  homes, 
and  founded  their  little  State.  Men 
and  women  are  still  living  who  can  re- 
member how,  sixty  years  ago,  the  spot 
where  the  great  mining  camp  of  Jo- 
hannesburg now  stands  was  a  great 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.          33 

silence  where  they  drew  up  their  wagon 
and  planted  their  little  home,  and 

FOUGHT  INCH  BY  INCH 

with  wild  beasts  to  reclaim  the  desert. 
In  this  great  northern  land,  which  no 
white  man  had  entered  or  desired,  they 
planted  their  people,  and  loving  it  as 
men  only  can  love  the  land  they  have 
suffered  and  bled  for,  the  gallant  little 
Republic  they  raised  they  love  to-day  as 
the  Swiss  loves  his  mountain  home  and 
the  Hollander  his  dykes.  It  is  theirs, 
the  best  land  on  earth  to  them. 

They  had  fought  not  for  money  but 
for  homes  for  their  wives  and  children ; 
when  they  battled,  the  wives  reloaded 
the  old  flint-lock  guns  and  handed  them 
down  from  the  front  chest  of  their 
wagon  for  the  men  who  stood  around 
defending  them.  It  was  a  wild  free 


i>4:          THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 

fight,  on  even  terms;  there  were  no 
Maxim  guns  to  mow  down  ebony  fig- 
ures by  the  hundred  at  the  turn  of  a 
handle ;  a  free  even  stand  up  fight ;  and 
there  were  times  when  it  almost  seemed 
the  assagai  would  overcome  the  old 
flint-lock,  and  the  voortrekkers  would 
be  swept  away.  The  panther  and  the 
jaguar  rolled  together  on  the  ground, 
and,  if  one  conquered  instead  of  the 
other,  it  was  yet  a  fair  fight,  and  South 
Africa  has  no  reason  to  be  ashamed  of 
the  way  either  her  black  men  or  her 
white  men  fought  it. 

If  it  be  asked,  has  the  Dutch  South 
African  always  dealt  gently  and  gen- 
erously with  the  native  folks  with 
whom  he  came  into  contact,  we  answer, 
"No,  he  has  not" — neither  has  any 
other  white  race  of  whom  we  have 
record  in  history.  He  kept  slaves  in 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.          35 

the  early  days !  Yes,  and  a  century  ago 
England  wished  to  make  war  on  her 
American  subjects  in  Virginia  for  re- 
fusing to  take  the  slaves  she  sent. 
There  was  a  time  when  we  might  have 
vaunted  some  superiority  in  the  Eng- 
lish-African method  of  dealing  with  the 
native. 

THAT  DAY  IS  PAST. 

The  terrible  events  of  the  last  five  years 
in  South  Africa  have  left  us  silent. 
There  is  undoubtedly  a  score  laid 
against  us  on  this  matter,  Dutch  and 
English  South  Africans  alike;  for  the 
moment  it  is  in  abeyance ;  in  fifty  or  a 
hundred  years  it  will  probably  be  pre- 
sented for  payment  as  other  bills  are, 
and  the  white  man  of  Africa  will  have 
to  settle  it.  It  has  been  run  up  as  heav- 
ily north  of  the  Limpopo  as  south ;  and 
when  our  sons  stand  up  to  settle  it,  it 


36          THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 

will  be  Dutchmen  and  Englishmen  to- 
gether who  have  to  pay  for  the  sins  of 
their  fathers. 

Such  is  the  history  of  our  fellow 
South  Africans  of  Dutch  extraction, 
who  to-day  cover  South  Africa  from 
Capetown  to  the  Limpopo.  In  the  Cape 
Colony,  and  increasingly  in  the  two  Re- 
publics, are  found  enormous  numbers 
of  cultured  and  polished  Dutch- 
descended  South  Africans,  using  Eng- 
lish as  their  daily  form  of  speech,  and 
in  no  way  distinguishable  from  the  rest 
of  the  nineteenth  century  Europeans. 
Our  most  noted  judges,  our  most  elo- 
quent lawyers,  our  most  skillful  physi- 
cians, are  frequently  men  of  this  blood ; 
the  lists  of  the  yearly  examinations  of 
our  Cape  University  are  largely  filled 
with  Dutch  names,  and  women,  as  well 
as  men,  rank  high  in  the  order  of  merit. 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.          37 

It  would  sometimes  almost  seem  as  if 
the  long  repose  the  people  has  had  from 
the  heated  life  of  cities,  with  the  large 
tax  upon  the  nervous  system,  had  sent 
them  back  to  the  world  of  intellectual 
occupations  with  more  than  the  ordi- 
nary grasp  of  power.  In  many  cases 
they  go  home  to  Europe  to  study,  and 
doubtless  their  college  life  and  English 
friendships  bind  Britain  close  to  their 
hearts  as  to  ours  who  are  English-born. 
The  present  State  Attorney  of  the 
Transvaal  is  a  man  who  has  taken 
some  of  the  highest  honors  Cambridge 
can  bestow.  Besides,  there  exist  still 
our  old  simple  farmers  or  Boers,  found 
in  the  greatest  perfection  in  the  mid- 
land districts  of  the  Colony,  in  the 
Transvaal  and  Free  State,  who  consti- 
tute a  large  part  of  the  virile  backbone 
of  South  Africa.  Clinging  to  their  old 


38          THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 

seventeenth  century  faiths  and  man- 
ners, and  speaking  their  African  taal, 
they  are  yet  tending  to  pass  rapidly 
away,  displaced  by  their  own  cultured 
modern  children;  but  they  still  form  a 
large  and  powerful  body.  Year  by 
year  the  lines  dividing  the  South  Afri- 
cans from  their  more  lately  arrived 
English-descent  brothers  are 

PASSING  AWAY. 

Love,  not  figuratively  but  literally,  is 
obliterating  the  line  of  distinction ; 
month  by  month,  week  by  week,  one 
might  say  hour  by  hour,  men  and  wom- 
en of  the  two  races  are  meeting.  In  the 
Colony  there  are  few  families  which 
have  not  their  Dutch  or  English  con- 
nections by  marriage;  in  another  gen- 
eration the  fusion  will  be  complete. 
There  will  be  no  Dutchmen  then  and 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.          39 

no  Englishmen  in  South  Africa,  but 
only  the  great  blended  South  African 
people  of  the  future,  speaking  the  Eng- 
lish tongue,  and  holding  in  reverend 
memory  its  founders  of  the  past, 
whether  Dutch  or  English.  Already, 
but  for  the  sorrowful  mistakes  of  the 
last  years,  the  line  of  demarcation 
would  have  faded  out  of  sight ;  external 
impediments  may  tend  to  delay  it,  but 
they  can  never  prevent  this  fusion ;  we 
are, one  people.  In  thirty  years'  time, 
the  daughter  of  the  man  who  landed 
yesterday  in  South  Africa  will  carry 
at  her  heart  the  child  of  a  de  Villiers, 
and  the  son  of  the  Cornish  miner  who 
lands  this  week  will  have  given  the 
name  of  her  English  grandmother  to 
his  daughter,  whose  mother  was  a  le 
Roux.  There  will  be  nothing  in  forty 


40          THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 

years  but  the  great  blended    race   of 
Africans. 

;(;  ****** 

These  South  Africans,  together  with 
those  of  English  descent,  but  who  have 
been  more  than  two  generations  in  the 
country  and  have  had  no — or  very  little 
— personal  and  intimate  knowledge  and 
intercourse  with  England,  may  be 
taken  as  standing  on  one  side  of  us. 
They  are  before  all  things  South  Afri- 
cans. They  have — both  Dutch  and 
English — in  many  cases  a  deep  and  sin- 
cere affection  for  the  English  language, 
English  institutions,  and  a  sincere  af- 
fection for  England  herself.  They  are 
grateful  to  her  for  her  watch  over  their 
seas;  and  were  a  Russian  fleet  to  ap- 
pear in  Table  Bay  to-morrow  and  at- 
tempt to  land  troops,  it  would  fly  as 
quickly  from  Dutch  as  English  bullets. 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.          41 

Neither  Dutch  nor  English  South  Afri- 
cans desire  to  see  any  other  power  in- 
stalled in  the  place  of  England.  Cul- 
tured Dutch  and  English  Africans  alike 
are  fed  on  English  literature,  and  Eng- 
land is  their  intellectual  home.  Even 
with  our  simplest  Dutch-descent  Afri- 
cans the  memories  of 

THE  OLD   BITTER   DAYS 

had  almost  faded,  when  the  ghastly 
events,  which  are  too  well  known  to 
need  referring  to,  awoke  the  old  ache 
at  the  heart  a  few  years  ago.  But  even 
they  would  see  quietly  no  other  power 
standing  in  the  place  of  England.  "It 
is  a  strange  thing,"  said  a  well-known 
Dutch  South  African  to  us  twenty-one 
years  ago,  "that  when  I  went  to  Eu- 
rope to  study  I  went  to  Holland,  and 
loved  the  land  and  the  people,  but  I  felt 


42          THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 

a  stranger;  it  was  the  same  in  Ger- 
many, the  same  in  France.  But  when 
I  landed  in  England  I  said,  'I  am  at 
home !' '  That  man  was  once  a  pas- 
sionate lover  of  England,  but  he  is  now 
a  heart-sore  man.  There  have  been 
representatives  of  England  in  South 
Africa  who  have  been  loved  as  dearly 
by  the  Dutch  as  by  the  English.  When 
a  few  years  ago  there  was  a  talk  of  Sir 
George  Grey  visiting  South  Africa  on 
his  way  home  from  New  Zealand  to 
England,  old  grey-headed  Dutchmen 
in  the  Free  State  expressed  their  re- 
solve to  take  one  more  long  train  jour- 
ney and  go  down  to  Capetown  only 
once  more  to  shake  the  hand  of  the  old 
man  who  more  than  forty  years  before 
had  been  Governor  of  the  Cape  Colony. 
So  deeply  had  a  great  Englishman,  up- 
holding the  loftiest  traditions  of  Eng- 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.          43 

lish  justice  and  humanity,  endeared 
himself  to  the  hearts  of  South  Africans. 
"God's  Englishman" — not  of  the  Stock 
Exchange  and  the  Catling  gun,  but  of 
the  great  heart. 

But  great  as  is  the  bond  between 
South  Africans,  whether  Dutch  or 
English,  and  England,  caused  by  lan- 
guage, sentiments,  interest  and  the 
noble  record  left  by  those  large  Eng- 
lishmen who  have  labored  among  us, 
the  South  African  pure  and  simple, 
whether  English  or  Dutch,  cannot  feel 
to  England  just  as  we  do.  Their  ma- 
terial interest  may  bind  them  to  Eng- 
land as  much  as  it  binds  us,  but  that 
deep  passion  for  her  honor,  the  con- 
sciousness that  she  represents  a  large 
spiritual  factor  in  our  lives,  which,  once 
gone,  nothing  replaces  for  us ;  that  her 
right-doing  is  ours,  and  her  wrong- 


44          THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 

doing  is  also  ours ;  that  in  a  manner  her 
flag  does  not  represent  anything  we 
have  an  interest  in,  or  even  that  we 
love,  but  that  in  a  curious  way  it  is 
ourselves — this  they  cannot  know. 
Therefore,  while  on  our  side  we  are 
connected  with  them  by  our  affection 
for  South  Africa  and  our  resolute  de- 
sire for  its  good,  our  position  remains 
not  exactly  as  theirs.  Our  standpoint 
is  at  once  broader  and  more  impartial 
in  dealing  with  South  African  ques- 
tions, in  that  we  are  bound  by  two-fold 
sympathies. 

On  the  other  hand  of  us,  who  are  at 
once  South  Africans  and  Englishmen, 
stand  in  South  Africa  another  body  of 
individuals  who  are  not  South  African, 
in  any  sense  or  only  partially,  but  to 
whom  from  our  peculiar  position  we 
also  stand  closely  bound. 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.          45 

Ever  since  the  time  when  England 
took  over  the  Cape,  there  has  been 
slowly  entering  the  country  a  thin 
stream  of  new  settlers,  English  main- 
ly, but  largely  reinforced  by  people  of 
other  nationalities.  Eighty  years  ago, 
in  1820,  a  comparatively  large  body  of 
Englishmen  arrived  at  once,  and  are 
known  as  the  British  Settlers.  They 
settled  at  first  mainly  in  Albany,  and 
certain  of  their  descendants  are  to-day, 
in  some  senses,  almost  as  truly  and 
typically  South  African  as  the  older 
Dutch  settlers. 

T> 

THEIR  LOVE  FOR  AFRICA 

is  intense.  Some  years  later  a  large 
body  of  Germans  were  brought  to  the 
Kingwilliams  town  division  of  South 
Africa.  They,  too,  became  farmers, 
and  their  descendants  are  already  true 


40          THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 

South  Africans.  For  the  rest,  for 
years  men  continually  dribbled  in  slow- 
ly and  singly  from  other  countries. 
Whether  they  came  out  in  search  of 
health,  as  clergymen,  missionaries,  or 
doctors,  or  in  search  of  manual  employ- 
ment, or  as  farmers,  they  almost  all  be- 
came, or  tended  to  become  almost  im- 
mediately, South  Africans.  They  set- 
tled in  the  land  permanently  among 
people  who  were  permanent  inhabit- 
ants, they  often  married  women  born  in 
South  Africa,  and  their  roots  soon  sank 
deeply  into  it.  They  brought  us  no 
new  problem  to  South  Africa.  They 
have  settled  among  us,  living  as  we 
live,  sharing  our  lives  and  interests.  It 
is  said  that  it  takes  thirty  years  to  make 
a  South  African,  and  in  a  manner  this 
is  true.  Even  now,  more  especially  in 
times  of  stress  or  danger,  it  is  easy  to 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION  47 

distinguish  the  African-born  man  from 
the  man  of  whatever  race  and  however 
long  in  the  country  who  has  not  been 
born  here.  But  in  the  main  these  new- 
comers have  become  South  Africans 
with  quickness  and  to  an  astonishing 
degree,  and  coming  in  in  driblets  they 
were,  so  to  speak,  easily  digested  by 
South  Africa. 

But  during  the  last  few  years 

A     NEW     PHENOMENON     HAS    STARTED 

up  in  South  African  life.  The  discov- 
ery of  vast  stores  of  mineral  wealth  in 
South  Africa,  more  especially  gold,  has 
attracted  suddenly  to  its  shores  a  large 
population  which  is  not  and  cannot,  at 
least  at  once,  be  South  African.  This 
body  is  known  under  the  name  of  the 
Uitlanders  (literally  "Foreigners"). 
Through  a  misfortune,  and  by  no 


48          THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 

fault  of  its  own,  the  mass  of  this  gold 
has  been  discovered  mainly  along  the 
Witwatersrand,  within  the  territory  of 
the  Transvaal  Republic,  and  more  espe- 
cially at  the  spot  where  the  great  min- 
ing camp  of  Johannesburg  now  stands, 
thus  throwing  upon  the  little  Republic 
the  main  pressure  of  the  new  arrivals. 
To  those  who  know  the  great  mining 
camps  of  Klondike  and  Western  Amer- 
ica, it  is  perhaps  not  necessary  to  de- 
scribe Johannesburg.  Here  are  found 
that  diverse  and  many-shaded  body  of 
humans,  who  appear  wherever  in  the 
world  gold  is  discovered.  The  China- 
man with  his  pigtail,  the  Indian  Coolie, 
the  manly  Kafir,  and  the  Half-caste ;  all 
forms  of  dark  and  colored  folk  are 
here,  and  outnumber  considerably  the 
white.  Nor  is  the  white  population  less 
multifarious  and  complex.  On  first 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.          49 

walking  the  streets,  one  has  a  strange 
sense  of  having  left  South  Africa,  and 
being  merely  in  some  cosmopolitan  cen- 
ter, which  might  be  anywhere  where  all 
nations  and  colors  gather  round  the  yel- 
low king.  Russian  Jews  and  Poles  are 
here  by  thousands,  seeking  in  South 
Africa  the  freedom  from  oppression 
that  was  denied  that  much-wronged 
race  of  men  in  their  own  birth-land; 
Cornish  and  Northumberland  miners; 
working  men  from  all  parts  of  the 
earth;  French,  German  and  English 
tradesmen;  while  on  the  Stock  Ex- 
change men  of  every  European  nation- 
ality are  found,  though  the  Jew  pre- 
dominates. The  American  strangers 
are  not  large  in  number,  but  are  repre- 
sented by  perhaps  the  most  cultured  and 
enlightened  class  in  the  camp,  the  min- 
ing engineer  and  large  importers  of 


50          THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 

mining  machinery  being  often  of  that 
race ;  our  lawyers  and  doctors  are  of  all 
nationalities,  while  in  addition  to  all 
foreigners,  there  is  a  certain  admixture 
of  English  and  Dutch  South  Africans. 
In  the  course  of  a  day  one  is  brought 
into  contact  with  men  of  every  species. 
Your  household  servant  may  be  a  Kafir, 
your  washerwoman  is  a  Half-caste, 
your  butcher  is  a  Hungarian,  your  bak- 
er English,  the  man  who  soles  your 
boots  a  German,  you  buy  your  vegeta- 
bles and  fruit  from  an  Indian  Coolie, 
your  coals  from  the  Chinaman  round 
the  corner,  your  grocer  is  a  Russian 
Jew,  your  dearest  friend  an  American. 
This  is  an  actual,  and  not  an  imaginary, 
description.  Here  are  found  the  most 
noted  prostitutes  of  Chicago;  and  that 
sad  sisterhood  created  by  the  disloca- 
tion of  our  yet  uncoordinated  civiliza- 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.          51 

tion,  and  known  in  Johannesburg  un- 
der the  name  of  continental  women, 
have  thronged  here  in  hundreds  from 
Paris  and  the  rest  of  Europe.  Gamb- 
ling, as  in  all  mining  camps,  is  rife; 
not  merely  men  but  even  women  put 
their  money  into  the  totalisator,  and 

A  LOW  FEVER  OF  ANXIETY 

for  chance  wealth  feeds  on  us.  Crimes 
of  violence  are  not  unknown;  but,  if 
one  may  speak  with  authority  who  has 
known  only  one  other  great  mining 
center  in  its  early  condition,  and  whose 
information  on  this  matter  has  there- 
fore been  gathered  largely  from  books, 
Johannesburg  compares  favorably,  and 
very  favorably,  with  other  large  min- 
ing camps  in  the  same  stage  of  their 
existence.  The  life  of  culture  and  im- 
personal thought  is  largely  and  of 


52          THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 

necessity  among  a  new  and  nomadic 
population  absent ;  art  and  science  are 
of  necessity  unrepresented;  but  a  gen- 
eral alertness  and  keenness  character- 
izes our  population.  In  the  bulk  of  our 
miners  and  working  men,  of  our  young 
men  in  banks  and  houses  of  business, 
we  have  a  large  mass  of  solid,  intel- 
ligent, and  invaluable  social  material 
which  counter-balances  that  large  mass 
of  human  flotsam  and  jetsam  found  in 
this,  as  in  all  other  mining  camps ;  while 
among  our  professional  men  and  min- 
ing officials  is  found  a  large  amount  of 
the  highest  professional  knowledge  and 
efficiency.  Happy  would  it  be  for  the 
gallant  little  Transvaal  Republic,  and 
well  for  South  Africa  as  a  whole,  if 
the  bulk  of  this  little  human  nature 
could  become  ours  forever,  if  they  were 
here  to  stay  with  us,  drink  out  of  our 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.          53 

cup  and  sup  out  of  our  platter.  But  in 
most  cases  this  is  not  so.  The  bulk  of 
the  population,  and  especially  its  most 
valuable  and  cultured  elements,  are 
here  temporarily ;  as  persons  who  go  to 
Italy  or  the  south  of  France  for  health 
or  sunshine,  who,  even  when  they  go 
year  after  year,  or  buy  villas  and  settle 
there  for  a  time,  yet  go  to  seek  merely 
health  and  sunshine,  not  strike  root 
there;  and  as  men  go  to  Italy  for 
health  and  sunshine,  the  bulk  of  us  here 
come  to  seek  gold  or  a  temporary  liveli- 
hood, and  for  nothing  more.  Even  our 
miners  and  working  men  in  Johannes- 
burg, the  most  stable  and  possibly  per- 
manent element  in  our  population,  have, 
in  many  instances,  their  wives  and  fam- 
ilies in  Cornwall  or  elsewhere;  and 
when  they  have  them  here  they  still 
think  of  the  return  home  for  good  in 


54          THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 

after  years;  while  with  the  wealthier 
classes  this  is  practically  universal.  Not 
only  have  our  leading  mining  engineers 
and  the  great  speculators  not  the  slight- 
est intention  of  staying  in  Johannes- 
burg permanently;  most  have  their 
wives  and  families  in  England,  Amer- 
ica, or  on  the  Continent,  and  project  as 
soon  as  possible  a  retirement  from  busi- 
ness, and  return  to  the  fashionable  cir- 
cles of  Europe  or  America.  Even 
among  South  African-born  men  the 
large  majority  of  us  intend  returning 
to  our  own  more  lovely  birthplaces  and 
homes  in  the  Colony  sooner  or  later; 
and  the  only  element  which  will  prob- 
ably form  any  integral  part  of  the 
South  African  nation  of  the  future  and 
become  subject  to  the  Transvaal  Re- 
public is  the  poorer,  which,  from  the 
larger  advantages  for  labor  here,  will 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.          55 

be  unable  to  return  to  its  natural  home. 
The  nomadic  population  of  Johannes- 
burg undoubtedly  consists  of  men  who 
are  brave  and  loyal  citizens  in  their 
own  States  and  nations.  To-morrow, 

IF  AMERICA  WERE  IN  DANGER, 

probably  almost  every  American  citi- 
zen would  troop  back  to  her  bosom,  and 
spend  not  only  life,  but  the  wealth  he 
had  gained  in  South  Africa  from  South 
African  soil,  in  defending  her.  Every 
German  would  go  home  to  the  Father- 
land ;  every  Englishman,  every  French- 
man, would,  as  all  brave  men  in  the 
world's  history  have  done,  when  the  cry 
arises,  "The  birthland  in  danger !"  The 
few  Spaniards  here  trooped  back  to 
Spain  as  soon  as  the  news  of  war  ar- 
rived. 

One  of  the  most  brilliant  and  able  of 


56          THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 

English  journalists  (a  man  whose  opin- 
ion on  any  subject  touching  his  own 
land  we  would  receive  almost  with  the 
reverence  accruing  to  the  man  who 
speaks  of  a  subject  he  knows  well  and 
has  studied  with  superior  abilities ;  but 
who  had  been  only  a  few  months  in  our 
land,  and,  therefore,  had  not  full  grasp 
of  either  our  people  or  our  problems, 
which  from  their  complexity  and  many- 
sidedness  are  subjects  for  a  life's  devo- 
tion) that  man,  three  and  a  half  years 
ago,  when  brave  little  Jameson — brave, 
however  mistaken — was  sent  in  to  cap- 
ture the  mines  of  Johannesburg  for  his 
master,  and  when  the  great  mixed  pop- 
ulation of  Johannesburg,  Germans  and 
French,  English  and  Jews,  Arabs  and 
Chinamen,  refused  to  arise  and  go  to 
aid  him,  and  when  hundreds  of  Eng- 
lishmen, Cornishmen  and  others  fled 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.          57 

from  Johannesburg,  fearing  that  Jame- 
son might  arrive  and  cause  a  dis- 
turbance —  said  that  Johannesburg 
would  be  known  forever  in  history  by 
the  name  of  Jiidasburg!  and  that  the 
Cornish  and  other  Englishmen  who  fled 
from  the  place  were  poltroons  and 
cowards.  But  he  was  mistaken. 

JOHANNESBURG  IS  NOT  JUDASBURG, 

and  the  Englishmen  who  fled  were  not 
poltroons.  There  ran  in  them  blood  as 
brave  as  any  in  England,  and  if  to-mor- 
row a  hostile  force  attacked  their  birth- 
land,  those  very  Cornish  miners  and 
English  working  men  would  die  in  the 
last  ditch  defending  their  land.  Those 
men  were  strangers  here ;  they  came  to 
earn  the  bread  they  could  with  diffi- 
culty win  in  their  own  land ;  they  were 
friendly  treated  by  South  Africa  and 


58          THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 

made  money  here ;  but  were  they  bound 
to  die  in  a  foreign  land  for  causes  which 
they  neither  knew  nor  cared  for  ? 

One  thing  only  can  possibly  justify 
war  and  the  destruction  of  our  fellows 
to  the  enlightened  and  humane  denizen 
of  the  nineteenth  century ;  the  unavoid- 
able conviction  that  by  no  other  means 
can  we  preserve  our  own  life  and  free- 
dom from  a  stronger  power,  or  defend 
a  weaker  state  or  individual  from  a 
stronger.  Nothing  can  even  palliate  it 
but  so  intense  a  conviction  of  a  right  so 
great  to  be  maintained  that  we  are  will- 
ing, not  merely  to  hire  other  men  to 
fight  and  die  for  us,  but  to  risk  our  own 
lives, 

A  LIFE  FOR  A  LIFE. 

This  the  Englishmen  in  Johannes- 
burg and  foreigners  of  all  nations  could 
not  possibly  feel.  They  were  not  more 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.          59 

bound  to  die  to  obtain  control  of  the 
gold  mines  of  Johannesburg  for  a  man 
already  wealthy  or  his  confederates, 
than  to  assist  South  Africans  in  defend- 
ing them;  or  than  we  who  visit  the 
south  of  France  or  Italy  for  health 
should  feel  ourselves  bound  to  remain 
and  die  if  war  breaks  out  between  the 
Bonapartists  and  the  Republicans,  or 
the  Pope  and  the  King.  If  by  a  pro- 
cess of  abstract  thought  we  have  ar- 
rived at  a  strong  conviction  of  a  right 
or  human  justice  to  be  maintained  by 
a  cause  with  which  we  have  no  prac- 
tical concern,  we  may  feel  morally 
compelled  to  take  a  part  in  it;  but  no 
man  can  throw  it  in  our  teeth  if  we 
refuse  to  die  in  a  strange  land  for 

A  CAUSE  THAT  IS  NOT  OURS. 

The  Englishmen  and  others  who  re- 


60          THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 

fused  to  fight  in  Johannesburg,  or  fled 
rather  than  run  the  risk  of  remaining, 
pursued  the  only  course  open  to  wise 
and  honorable  men.  Had  they  resolved 
to  remain  permanently  in  South  Africa, 
and  to  become  citizens  of  the  Transvaal 
Republic,  the  case  might  have  been 
otherwise.  As  it  was,  they  could  not 
run  a  knife  into  the  heart  of  a  people 
which  had  hospitably  received  them, 
and  attempt  to  destroy  a  land  in  which 
they  had  found  nothing  but  greater 
wealth  and  material  comfort  than  in 
their  own ;  and  they  could  also  not  en- 
ter upon  a  deadly  raid  for  a  man  whom 
personally  the  workers  of  Johannes- 
burg cared  nothing  for,  and  with  whom 
they  had  not  a  sympathy  or  interest  in 
common.  In  leaving  Johannesburg  and 
refusing  to  fight,  they  pursued  the  only 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.          61 

course  left  open  to  them  by  justice  and 
honor. 

Rightly  to  understand  the  problem 
before  the  little  Transvaal  Republic  to- 
day, it  is  necessary  for  Englishmen  to 
imagine  not  merely  that,  within  the 
space  of  ten  or  twelve  years,  forty  mill- 
ions of  Russians,  Frenchmen  and  Ger- 
mans should  enter  England,  not  in 
driblets  and  in  time  extending  over  half 
a  century,  so  that  they  might,  in  a 
measure,  be  absorbed  and  digested  into 
the  original  population,  but  instantan- 
eously and  at  once ;  not  merely,  that  the 
large  bulk  of  them  did  not  intend  to  re- 
main in  England,  and  were  there  mere- 
ly to  extract  wealth;  not  merely,  that 
the  bulk  of  this  wealth  was  exported  at 
once  to  other  countries  enriching  Rus- 
sia, France  and  Germany  out  of  the 
products  of  English  soil ;  that  would  be 


62          THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  "QUESTION. 

comparatively  a  small  matter — but,  that 
the  bulk  of  the  wealth  extracted  was  in 
the  hands  of  a  few  persons,  and  that 
these  persons  were  opposed  to  the  con- 
tinued freedom  and  independence  of 
England,  and  were  attempting  by  the 
use  of  the  wealth  they  extracted  from 
England  to  stir  up  Russia  and  France 
against  her,  that  through  the  loss  of 
her  freedom  they  might  the  better  ob- 
tain the  command  of  her  wealth  and 
lands.  When  the  Englishman  has 
vividly  drawn  this  future  for  himself, 
he  will  hold,  as  nearly  as  is  possible,  in 
a  nutshell  an  image  of  the  problem 
which  the  people  and  government  of 
the  Transvaal  Republic  are  called  on 
to  face  to-day ;  and  we  put  it  straightly 
to  him  whether  this  problem  is  not 
one  of 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.          63 

INFINITE    COMPLEXITY    AND 
DIFFICULTY  ? 

Much  unfortunate  misunderstanding 
has  arisen  from  the  simple  use  of  the 
terms  "capitalist"  and  "monopolist"  in 
the  discussion  of  South  African  mat- 
ters. Without  the  appending  of  ex- 
planation, they  convey  a  false  impres- 
sion. These  terms,  so  familiar  to  the 
students  of  social  phenomena  in  Eu- 
rope and  America,  are  generally  used 
in  connection  with  a  larger,  but  a  quite 
distinct  body  of  problems.  The  terms 
"capitalism,"  "monopolist,"  and  "mil- 
lionaire" are  now  generally  associated 
with  the  question  of  the  forming  of 
"trusts,"  "corners,"  etc.,  and  the 
question  whether  it  is  desirable  that  so- 
ciety should  so  organize  itself  that  one 
man  may  easily  obtain  possession  of 
twenty  millions,  while  the  bulk  of 


64         THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 

equally  intelligent  and  equally  laborious 
men  obtain  little  or  nothing  from  the 
labor  of  humanity.  This  question  is  a 
world-wide  question;  it  is  noj  one  in 
any  sense  peculiarly  South  African;  it 
is  a  world-wide  problem,  which,  as  the 
result  of  much  thought,  careful  consid- 
eration and  many  experiments,  the  na- 
tions of  the  civilized  world  will  be 
called  to  adjudicate  upon  during  the 
twentieth  century;  but  it  is  not  the 
question  with  which  South  Africa 
stands  face  to  face  at  this  moment.  The 
question  before  us  is  not :  Shall  one 
South  African  possess  twenty  millions, 
live  in  his  palace,  live  on  champagne, 
have  his  yacht  in  Table  Bay,  and  deck 
women  with  a  hundred  thousand 
pounds'  worth  of  jewels,  while  the 
South  African  next  door  has  nothing? 
This  is  not  our  question.  Our  problem 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.          65 

is  not  the  problem  of  America.  In 
America  there  are  many  individuals 
possessing  wealth  amounting  to  many 
millions,  but  when  the  United  States  in 
their  entirety  is  taken  the  £40,000,000 
of  the  richest  individual  sink  to  noth- 
ing ;  and,  were  it  the  desire  of  the  rich- 
est millionaire  in  the  States 

TO  CORRUPT  AND  PURCHASE 

the  whole  population  for  political  pur- 
poses, he  could  not  pay  so  much  as  £i  a 
head  to  the  80,000,000  inhabitants  of 
the  country.  Further,  the  bulk  of 
American  millionaires  are  American! 
They  differ  in  no  respect,  except  in 
their  possession  of  large  wealth,  in  in- 
terest or  affections,  from  the  shoemak- 
er in  the  alley  or  the  farmer  at  his 
plough.  They  are  American  citizens; 
their  fate  is  bound  up  with  that  of  the 


66          THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 

land  they  live  in;  their  ambitions  are 
American.  If  a  great  misfortune  should 
overtake  America  to-morrow  there  is 
no  reason  to  suppose  that  the  heart  of 
a  Rockefeller  or  a  Vanderbilt  would 
not  ache  as  that  of  the  simplest  cowboy 
in  the  States.  When  they  die,  it  is  to 
American  institutions  that  they  leave 
their  munificent  donations,  and  the  col- 
leges and  public  institutions  of  America 
are  endowed  by  them.  The  mass  even 
of  that  wealth  they  expend  on  them- 
selves is  expended  in  America,  and, 
whether  they  will  or  no,  returns  to  the 
people  of  the  country  in  many  forms. 
The  millionaires  of  America  are  and  re- 
main Americans ;  and  the  J.  Gould  who 
should  expend  his  millions  in  stirring 
up  war  between  the  North  and  South, 
or  in  urging  England  to  attack  and  slay 
American  citizens,  would  be  dealt  with 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.          67 

by  his  fellow-subjects,  whether  mil- 
lionaires or  paupers,  with  expedition. 
The  question  whether  the  conditions 
which  lead  to  such  vast  accretions  of 
fortune  in  the  hands  of  private  indi- 
viduals is  a  desirable  one  and  of  social 
benefit  is  an  open  one,  and  a  fair  field 
for  impartial  discussion ;  but,  whatever 
decision  is  arrived  at  with  regard  to 
millionaires  and  private  monopoly  as 
they  exist  in  Europe  or  the  United 
States,  it  has  little  or  no  bearing  on  the 
problem  of  South  Africa,  which  is  to- 
tally distinct. 

South  Africa  is  a  young  country,  and 
taken  as  a  whole  it  is  an  arid,  barren 
country  agriculturally.  Our  unrivalled 
climate,  our  sublime  and  rugged  natural 
scenery, 


68         THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 
THE  JOY  AND  PRIDE 

of  the  South  African  heart,  is  largely 
the  result  of  this  very  aridity  and  rocki- 
ness.  Parts  are  fruitful,  but  we  have 
no  vast  corn-producing  plains,  which 
for  generations  may  be  cultivated  al- 
most without  replenishing,  as  in  Rus- 
sia and  America ;  we  have  few  facilities 
for  producing  those  vast  supplies  of 
flesh  which  are  poured  forth  from  Aus- 
tralia and  New  Zealand;  already  we 
import  a  large  portion  of  the  grain  and 
flesh  we  consume.  We  may,  with  care, 
become  a  great  fruit-producing  coun- 
try, and  create  some  rich  and  heavy 
wines,  but,  on  the  whole,  agriculturally, 
we  are,  and  must  remain,  as  compared 
with  most  other  countries,  a  poor  na- 
tion. Nor  have  we  any  great  inland 
lakes,  seas,  and  rivers,  or  arms  of  the 
sea,  to  enable  us  to  become  a  great 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.         69 

maritime  or  carrying  people.  One 
thing  only  we  have  which  saves  us  from 
being  the  poorest  country  on  the  earth, 
and  should  make  us  one  of  the  richest. 
We  have  our  vast  stores  of  mineral 
wealth,  of  gold  and  diamonds,  and 
probably  of  other  wealth  yet  unfound. 
This  is  all  we  have.  Nature  has  given 
us  nothing  else;  we  are  a  poor  people 
but  for  these.  Out  of  the  veins  run- 
ning through  rocks  and  hills,  and  the 
mud-beds,  heavy  with  jewels,  that  lie 
in  our  arid  plains,  must  be  reared  and 
created  our  great  national  institutions, 
our  colleges  and  museums,  our  art  gal- 
leries and  universities;  by  means  of 
these  our  system  of  education  must  be 
extended ;  and  on  the  material  side,  out 
of  these  must  the  great  future  of  South 
Africa  be  built  up — or  not  at  all.  The 
discovery  of  our  mineral  wealth  came 


70          THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 

somewhat  suddenly  upon  us.  We  were 
not  prepared  for  its  appearance  by  wise 
legislative  enactments,  as  in  New  Zea- 
land or  some  other  countries.  Before 
the  people  of  South  Africa  as  a  whole 
had  had  time  to  wake  up  to  the  truth 
and  to  learn  the  first 

GREAT  AND  TERRIBLE  LESSON, 

our  diamonds  should  have  taught  us 
the  gold  mines  of  the  Transvaal  were 
discovered. 

We  South  Africans,  Dutch  and  Eng- 
lish alike,  are  a  curious  folk,  strong, 
brave,  with  a  terrible  intensity  and  per- 
severance, but  we  are  not  a  sharp  people 
well  versed  in  the  movements  of  the 
speculative  world.  In  a  few  years  the 
entire  wealth  of  South  Africa,  its  mines 
of  gold  and  diamonds,  its  coal  fields, 
and  even  its  most  intractable  lands, 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.          71 

from  the  lovely  Hex  River  Valley  to 
Magaliesberg,  had  largely  passed  into 
the  hands  of  a  very  small  knot  of  spec- 
ulators. In  hardly  any  instances  are 
they  South  Africans.  That  they  were 
not  South  African-born  would  in  itself 
matter  less  than  nothing,  had  they 
thrown  in  their  lot  with  us,  if  in  sym- 
pathies, hopes,  and  fears  they  were  one 
with  us.  They  are  not.  It  is  not  mere- 
ly that  the  wealth  which  should  have 
made  us  one  of  the  richest  peoples  in  the 
world  has  left  us  one  of  the  poorest, 
and  is  exported  to  other  countries,  that 
it  builds  palaces  in  Park  Lane,  buys 
yachts  in  the  Mediterranean,  fills  the 
bags  of  the  croupiers  at  Monte  Carlo, 
decks  foreign  women  with  jewels,  while 
our  citizens  toil  in  poverty;  this  is  a 
small  matter.  But  those  men  are  not 
of  us!  That  South  Africa  we  love 


72          THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 

whose  great  future  is  dearer  to  us  than 
our  own  interests,  in  the  thought  of 
whose  great  and  noble  destiny  lies  the 
source  of  our  patriotism  and  highest  in- 
spiration, for  whose  good  in  a  far  dis- 
tant future  we,  Dutch  and  English 
alike,  would  sacrifice  all  in  the  present 
— this  future  is  no  more  to  them  than 
the  future  of  the  Galapagos  Islands. 
We  are  a  hunting  ground  to  them,  a 
field  for  extracting  wealth,  for 

BUILDING  UP  FAME  AND  FORTUNE; 

nothing  more.  This  matter  does  not 
touch  the  Transvaal  alone;  from  the 
lovely  Hex  River  Valley,  east,  west, 
north,  and  south,  our  lands  are  being 
taken  from  us,  and  passing  into  the 
hands  of  men  who  not  only  care  nothing 
for  South  Africa,  but  apply  the  vast 
wealth  they  have  drawn  from  South  Af- 


THB  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.          73 

rican  soil  in  an  attempt  to  corrupt  our 
public  life  and  put  their  own  nominees 
into  our  parliaments,  to  grasp  the  reins 
of  power,  that  their  wealth  may  yet 
more  increase.  Is  it  strange  that  from 
the  hearts  of  South  Africans,  English 
and  Dutch  alike,  there  is  arising  an  ex- 
ceedingly great  and  bitter  cry:  "We 
have  sold  our  birthright  for  a  mess  of 
pottage !  The  lands,  the  mineral  wealth 
which  should  have  been  ours  to  build 
up  the  great  Africa  of  the  future  has 
gone  into  strange  hands!  And  they 
use  the  gold  they  gain  out  of  us  to  en- 
slave us ;  they  strike  at  our  hearts  with 
a  sword  gilded  with  South  African 
gold!  While  the  gold  and  stones  re- 
mained undiscovered  in  the  bosom  of 
our  earth,  it  was  saved  up  for  us  and 
for  our  grandchildren  to  build  up  the 
great  future ;  it  is  going  f roia  us  never 


74          THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 

to  return;  and  when  they  have  rifled 
our  earth  and  picked  the  African  bones 
bare  as  the  vultures  clear  the  carcass 
of  their  prey,  they  will  leave  us  with  the 
broken  skeleton!" 

I  think  there  is  no  broad-minded  and 
sympathetic  man  who  can  hear  this  cry 
without  sympathy.  The  South  African 
question  is  far  other  than  the  question : 
Shall  one  man  possess  twenty  millions 
while  his  brother  possesses  none  ?  It  is 
one  far  deeper. 

Nevertheless,  there  is  another  side  to 
the  question.  Nations,  like  individuals, 
suffer,  and  must  pay  the  price,  yet  more 
for  their  ignorance  and  stupidity  than 
their  wilful  crimes.  He  who  sits  supine 
and  intellectually  inert,  while  great  evils 
are  being  accomplished,  sins  wholly  as 
much  as  he  whose  positive  action  pro- 
duces them,  and  must  pay  the  same 


THE  SOOTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.          75 

price.  The  man  at  the  helm  who  goes 
to  sleep  cannot  blame  the  rock  when 
the  ship  is  thrown  upon  it,  though  it  be 
torn  asunder.  He  should  have  known 
the  rock  was  there,  and  steered  clear  of 
it.  It  is  perhaps  natural 

A  GREAT  BITTERNESS 

should  have  arisen  in  our  hearts  to- 
wards the  men  who  have  disinherited 
us;  but  is  it  always  just?  Personally, 
and  in  private  life,  they  may  be  far  from 
being  inhuman  or  unjust;  they  may  be 
rich  in  such  qualities ;  at  most  they  re- 
main men  and  brothers  who  differ  in  no 
way  from  the  majority  of  us.  We 
made  certain  laws  and  regulations; 
they  took  advantage  of  them  for  their 
own  success;  they  have  but  pursued 
the  universal  laws  of  the  business 
world,  and  of  the  struggle  of  competi- 


76          THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 

tion.  It  was  we  who  did  not  defend 
ourselves,  and  must  take  the  conse- 
quences. As  long  as  any  of  these  men 
merely  use  the  wealth  they  extract 
from  Africa  for  their  own  pleasures  and 
interest,  we  have  not  much  to  complain 
of,  and  must  bear  the  fruit  of  our  folly. 
The  speculators  who  rule  in  Mashona- 
land  were  wiser  than  we ;  they  ordained 
that  50  per  cent  of  all  gold  mining 
profits  should  go  to  the  government, 
and  they  retained  all  diamonds  found  as 
a  government  monopoly.  We  were  not 
wise  enough  to  do  so,  and  the  nation 
must  suffer.  But  poverty  is  not  the 
worst  thing  that  can  overtake  an  indi- 
vidual or  a  nation.  In  that  harsh 
school  the  noblest  lessons  and  the 
sturdiest  virtues  are  learnt.  The  great- 
est nations,  like  the  greatest  individuals, 
have  often  been  the  poorest ;  and  with 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.          77 

wealth  comes  often  what  is  more  ter- 
rible than  poverty — corruption.  Not  all 
the  millionaires  of  Europe  can  prevent 
one  man  of  genius  being  born  in  this 
land  to  illuminate  it;  not  all  the  gold 
of  Africa  can  keep  us  from  being  the 
bravest,  freest  nation  on  earth ;  no  man 
living  can  shut  out  from  our  eyes  the 
glories  of  our  African  sky,  or  kill  one 
throb  of  our  exultant  joy  in  our  great 
African  plains;  nor  can  all  earth  pre- 
vent us  from  growing  into  a  great,  free, 
wise  people.  The  faults  of  the  past  we 
cannot  undo;  but 

THE  FUTURE  IS  OURS. 

But  when  the  men,  who  came  penniless 
to  our  shores  and  have  acquired  millions 
out  of  our  substance,  are  not  content 
with  their  gains ;  when  they  seek  to  dye 
the  South  African  soil  which  has  re- 


78         THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 

ceived  them  with  the  blood  of  its  citi- 
zens— when  they  seek  her  freedom — 
the  matter  is  otherwise. 

This  is  the  problem,  the  main  weight 
of  which  has  fallen  on  the  little  South 
African  Republic.  It  was  that  little 
ship  which  received  the  main  blow 
when  eighty  thousand  souls  of  all  na- 
tionalities leaped  aboard  at  once;  and 
gallantly  the  taut  little  craft,  if  for  a 
moment  she  shivered  from  stem  to 
stern,  has  held  on  her  course  to  shore, 
with  all  souls  on  board. 

We  put  it,  not  to  the  man  in  the 
street,  who,  for  lack  of  time  or  interest, 
may  have  given  no  thought  to  such 
matters,  but  to  all  statesmen,  of  what- 
ever nationality,  who  have  gone  deeply 
into  the  problems  of  social  structure 
and  the  practical  science  of  government, 
and  to  all  thinkers  who  have  devoted 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.          79 

time  and  study  to  the  elucidation  of  so- 
cial problems  and  the  structure  of  so- 
cieties and  nations,  whether  the  problem 
placed  suddenly  for  solution  before  this 
little  State  does  not  exceed  in  complex- 
ity and  difficulty  that  which  it  has  al- 
most ever  been  a  necessity  that  the  peo- 
ple of  any  country  in  the  past  or  pres- 
ent should  deal  with  ?  When  we  remem- 
ber how  gravely  is  discussed  the  arrival 
of  a  few  hundred  thousand  Chinamen 
in  America,  who  are  soon  lost  in  the 
vast  bulk  of  the  population,  as  a  handful 
of  chaff  is  lost  in  a  bag  of  corn ;  when 
we  recall  the  fact  that  the  appearance 
in  England  of  a  few  thousand  labouring 
Polish  and  Russian  Jews  amidst  a  vast 
population,  into  which  they  will  be  ab- 
sorbed in  less  than  two  generations 
forming  good  and  leal  English  subjects, 
has  been  solemnly  adverted  upon  as 


80          THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 
A  GREAT  NATIONAL  CALAMITY, 

and  measures  have  been  weightily  dis- 
cussed for  forcibly  excluding  them,  it 
will  assuredly  be  clear,  to  all  impartial 
and  truth  loving  minds,  that  the  prob- 
lem which  the  Transvaal  Republic  has 
suddenly  had  to  deal  with  is  one  of 
transcendent  complexity  and  difficulty. 
We  put  it  to  all  generous  and  just  spir- 
its, whether  of  statesmen  or  thinkers, 
whether  the  little  Republic  does  not  de- 
serve our  sympathy,  the  sympathy 
which  wise  minds  give  to  all  who  have 
to  deal  with  new  and  complex  problems, 
where  the  past  experience  of  humanity 
has  not  marked  out  a  path — and  wheth- 
er, if  we  touch  the  subject  at  all,  it  is 
not  necessary  that  it  should  be  in  that 
large,  impartial,  truth-seeking  spirit,  in 
which  humanity  demands  we  should  ap- 


THB  'jOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.          81 


prcTach  all  great  social  difficulties  and 
questions  ? 

We  put  it  further  to  such  intelligent 
minds  as  have  impartially  watched  the 
action  and  endeavors  of  the  little  Re- 
public in  dealing  with  its  great  prob- 
lems, whether,  when  all  the  many  sides 
and  complex  conditions  are  considered, 
it  has  not  manfully  and  wonderfully  en- 
deavored to  solve  them  ? 

It  is  sometimes  said  that  when  one 
stands  looking  down  from  the  edge  of 
this  hill  at  the  great  mining  camp  of 
Johannesburg  stretching  beneath,  with 
its  heaps  of  white  sand  and  debris 
mountains  high,  its  mining  chimneys 
belching  forth  smoke,  with  its  seventy 
thousand  Kafirs,  and  its  eighty  thous- 
and men  and  women,  white  or  colored, 
of  all  nationalities  gathered  here  in  the 
space  of  a  few  years,  on  the  spot  where 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 

fifteen  years  ago  the  Boer's  son  guided 
his  sheep  to  the  water  and  the  Boer's 
wife  sat  alone  at  evening  at  the  house 
door  to  watch  the  sunset,  we  are  look- 
ing upon  one  of  the  most  wonderful 
spectacles  on  earth.  And  it  is  wonder- 
ful ;  but,  as  we  look  at  it,  the  thought 
always  arises  within  us  of  something 
more  wonderful  yet — the  marvelous 
manner  in  which  a  little  nation  of  sim- 
ple folk,  living  in  peace  in  the  land  they 
loved,  far  from  the  rush  of  cities  and 
the  concourse  of  men,  have  risen  to  the 
difficulties  of  their  condition ;  how  they, 
without  instruction  in  statecraft,  or  tra- 
ditionary rules  of  policy,  have  risen  to 
face  their  great  difficulties,  and  have 
sincerely  endeavored  to  meet  them  in  a 
large  spirit,  and  have  largely  succeeded. 
Nothing  but  that 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.          83 
CURIOUS  AND  WONDERFUL  INSTINCT 

for  statecraft  and  the  organization  and 
arrangement  of  new  social  conditions 
which  seem  inherent  as  a  gift  of  the 
blood  to  all  those  peoples  who  took  their 
rise  in  the  little  deltas  on  the  northeast 
of  the  continent  of  Europe,  where  the 
English  and  Dutch  peoples  alike  took 
their  rise,  could  have  made  it  possible. 
We  do  not  say  that  the  Transvaal  Re- 
public has  among  its  guides  and  rulers 
a  Solon  or  a  Lycurgus;  but  it  has  to- 
day, among  the  men  guiding  its  destiny, 
men  of  brave  and  earnest  spirit,  who 
are  seeking  manfully  and  profoundly  to 
deal  with  the  great  problems  before 
them  in  a  wide  spirit  of  humanity  and 
justice.  And,  we  do  again  repeat,  that 
the  strong  sympathy  of  all  earnest  and 
thoughtful  minds,  not  only  in  Africa, 
but  in  England,  should  be  with  them. 


84          THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 

Let  us  take  as  an  example  one  of  the 
simplest  elements  of  the  question,  the 
enfranchisement  of  the  new  arrivals. 
Even  those  of  us,  who  with  the  present 
writer  are  sometimes  denominated  "the 
fanatics  of  the  franchise,"  who  hold  that 
that  state  is  healthiest  and  strongest, 
in  the  majority  of  cases,  in  which  every 
adult  citizen,  irrespective  of  sex  or  posi- 
tion, possesses  a  vote,  base  our  assertion 
on  the  fact  that  each  individual  forming 
an  integral  part  of  the  community  has 
their  all  at  stake  in  that  community; 
that  the  woman's  stake  is  likely  to  be  as 
/arge  as  the  man's,  and  the  poor  man's 
as  the  rich;  for  each  has  only  his  all, 
his  life;  and  that  their  devotion  to  its 
future  good,  and  their  concern  in  its 
health  is  likely  to  be  equal;  that  the 
state  gains  by  giving  voice  to  all  its  in- 
tegral parts..  But  the  ground  is  cut 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.          85 

from  under  our  feet  when  a  large  mass 
of  persons  concerned  are  not  integral 
portions  of  the  State,  but  merely  tem- 
porarily connected  with  it,  have  no  in- 
terest in  its  remote  future,  and  only  a 
commercial  interest  in  its  present.  We 
may  hold  (and  we  personally  very 
strongly  hold)  that  the  moment  a 
stranger  lands  in  a  country,  however 
ignorant  he  may  be  of  its  laws,  usages, 
and  interests,  if  he  intends  to  remain 
permanently  in  it,  and  incorporates  all 
his  life  and  interest  with  it,  he  becomes 
an  integral  part  of  the  State,  and  should 
as  soon  as  possible  be  given  the  power 
of  expressing  his  will  through  its  legis- 
lature ;  but  the 

PRACTICAL    AND    OBVIOUS    DIFFICULTY 

at  once  arises  of  determining  who,  in 
an  uncertain  stream  of  strangers  who 


86          THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION 

suddenly  flow  into  a  land,  is  so  situated ! 
I  may  go  to  Italy,  accompanied  by  two 
friends;  we  may  hire  the  same  house 
between  us  (to  use  a  homely  illustra- 
tion) ;  there  may  be  no  external  evi- 
dence of  difference  in  our  attitude; 
yet  I  may  have  determined  to  live 
and  die  in  Italy;  I  may  feel  a  most 
intense  affection  for  its  people  and 
its  institutions,  and  a  great  solici- 
tude over  its  future.  The  first  man  who 
accompanies  me  may  feel  perfectly  in- 
different to  land  and  people,  and  be 
there  merely  for  health,  leaving  again 
as  soon  as  it  is  restored.  The  second 
may  be  animated  by  an  intense  hatred 
of  Italy  and  Italians ;  he  not  only  may 
not  wish  well  to  the  nation,  but  may  de- 
sire to  see  it  downtrodden  by  Austria, 
and  its  inhabitants  destroyed.  By  en- 
franchising me  the  moment  I  arrived, 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.          87 

the  Italian  nation  would  gain  a  faith- 
ful and  devoted  citizen,  who  would  sac- 
rifice all  for  her  in  time  of  danger,  and 
devote  thought  in  times  of  peace ;  in  en- 
franchising immediately  the  second 
man,  they  would  perform  an  act  entire- 
ly negative  and  indifferent  without  loss 
or  gain  either  way;  in  enfranchising 
the  third  man,  they  would  perform  an 
act  of  minor  social  suicide.  Yet  it 
would  be  impossible  at  once,  and  from 
any  superficial  study  to  discover  our 
differences ! 

THE  GREAT   SISTER   REPUBLIC 

across  the  water  has  met  these  difficul- 
ties by  instituting  a  probationary  resi- 
dence of  two  years,  after  which  by  tak- 
ing a  solemn  oath  renouncing  all  al- 
legiance to  any  foreign  sovereign  or 
land,  more  especially  to  the  ruler  of 


88         THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 

England  and  the  English  nation,  and 
declaring  their  wish  to  live  and  die  cit- 
izens of  the  United  States,  the  new 
comers  are,  after  a  further  residence  of 
another  three  years,  fully  enfranchised, 
and  become  citizens  of  the  American 
Republic.  In  this,  as  in  many  other 
cases,  it  would  appear  that  the  great 
Republic  has  struck  on  a  wise  and  prac- 
tical solution  to  a  complex  problem ;  and 
in  this  matter,  as  in  many  others,  we, 
personally,  should  like  to  see  the  action 
of  the  great  sister  Republic  followed. 
But  thoughtful  minds  may  suggest,  on 
the  other  hand,  that,  while  in  America, 
at  least  at  the  present  day,  the  newly 
enfranchised  burgher  receives  but  one- 
sixteen  millionth  of  the  State  power  and 
of  governmental  control  on  his  enfran- 
chisement, in  a  small  state  like  the 
Transvaal  each  new  burgher  receives 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.          89 

over  eight  hundred  times  that  power  in 
the  government  and  control  of  the 
country,  and  that  this  makes  a  serious 
difference  in  the  importance  of  making 
sure  of  the  loyalty  and  sincerity  of  your 
citizen  before  you  enfranchise  him.  We 
see  this,  and  there  is  something  to  be 
said  for  it.  It  has  been  held  by  many 
sincerely  desirous  of  arriving  at  a  just 
and  balanced  conclusion,  that,  in  a  Re- 
public situated  as  the  Transvaal  is,  a 
longer  residence  and  the  votes  of  a  cer- 
tain proportion  of  the  already  enfran- 
chised citizens  are  necessary  before  the 
vast  rights  conferred  by  citizenship  in 
a  small  purely  democratic  State  are 
granted.  The  terms  for  the  enfranchise- 
ment for  foreigners  in  England  yield  us 
no  instructive  analogy ;  for,  in  a  country 
with  an  hereditary  sovereign  and  an 
hereditary  Upper  House  the  enfran- 


90          THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 

chised  foreigner  receives  only  a  minute 
fraction  of  the  power  conferred  on  the 
elector  in  a  pure  democracy.  The  little 
Russian  Jew  who  has  a  vote  given  him 
in  London  can  never  become  the  su- 
preme head  of  the  State,  can  never  sit 
in  or  vote  for  members  of  the  Upper 
House,  and  receives  only  the  minute 
fractional  power  of  voting  for  members 
of  the  Lower.  It  is 

IN  A  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

where  the  people  are  the  sovereign  and 
represent  in  themselves  the  hereditary 
ruler,  the  hereditary  Upper  House,  and 
the  Lower  House  combined,  that  the 
personnel  of  each  accredited  citizen  be- 
comes all  important.  The  greater  the 
stability  and  immobility  at  one  end  of 
a  State,  the  greater  the  mobility  and  in- 
stability which  may  be  allowed  at  the 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.          91 

other  end,  without  endangering  the  sta- 
bility of  the  State  as  a  whole,  or  the 
healthy  performance  of  its  functions. 
Even  on  this  comparatively  small  ques- 
tion of  the  franchise  it  is  evident  that 
the  problem  before  the  little  Transvaal 
Republic  is  one  of  much  complexity, 
and  on  which  minds  broadly  liberal  and 
sincerely  desirous  of  attaining  to  the 
wisest  and  most  humane  and  most  en- 
lightened judgment  may  sincerely  dif- 
fer. 

Of  those  other  and  far  more  serious 
problems  which  the  Republic  faces  in 
common  with  South  Africa,  there  is  no 
necessity  here  to  speak  further;  the 
thoughtful  mind  may  follow  them  out 
for  itself.  Time  and  experiment  must 
be  allowed  for  the  balance  of  things  to 
adjust  themselves. 

South  Africa  has  need  of  more  cit- 


92         THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 

izens  leal  and  true.  Whoever  enters 
South  Africa  and  desires  to  become  one 
of  us,  to  drink  from  our  cup  and  sup 
from  our  platter,  to  mix  his  seed  with 
ours  and  build  up  the  South  Africa  of 
the  future — him  let  us  receive  with  open 
arms.  From  great  mixtures  of  races 
spring  great  peoples.  The  scorned  and 
oppressed  Russian  Jew,  landing  here  to- 
day, vivified  by  our  fresh  South  Af- 
rican breezes,  may  yet  be  the  progenitor 
of  the  Spinoza  and  Maimonides  of  the 
great  future  South  Africa,  who  shall 
lead  the  world  in  philosophy  and 
thought.  The  pale  German  cobbler  who 
with  his  wife  and  children  lands  to- 
day, so  he  stays  with  us  and  becomes 
one  with  us,  may  yet  be  the  father  of 
the  greater  Hans  Sachs  of  Africa ;  and 
the  half-starved  Irish  peasant  become 
the  forerunner  of  our  future  Burkes 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.          93 

and  William  Porters.  The  rough  Cor- 
nish miner,  who  is  looking  out  with 
surprised  eyes  at  our  new  South  Afri- 
can world  to-day,  may  yet  give  to  us 
our  greatest  statesmen  and  noblest  lead- 
er. The  great  African  nation  of  the 
future  will  have  its  foundations  laid  on 
stones  from  many  lands.  Even  to  the 
Coolie  and  the  Chinaman,  so  he  comes 
among  us,  we  personally  should  say: 
Stretch  forth  the  hand  of  brotherhood. 
We  may  not  desire  him,  we  may  not  in- 
tentionally bring  him  among  us,  but, 
so  he  comes  to  remain  with  us,  let  South 
Africa  be  home  to  him. 

"Be  not  unmindful  to  entertain 
strangers,  for  some  have  thereby  en- 
tertained angels  unawares." 

***** 

We,  English  South  Africans  of  to- 


94          THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 

day,  who  are  truly  South  African,  lov- 
ing 

THE  LAND  OF  OUR  BIRTH, 

and  men  inhabiting  it,  yet  bound  by 
intense  and  loving  ties,  not  only  of  in- 
tellectual affinity  but  of  personal  pas- 
sion, to  the  homeland  from  which  our 
parents  came,  and  where  the  richest 
formative  years  of  our  life  were  passed, 
we  stand  to-day  midway  between  these 
two  great  sections  of  South  African 
folk,  the  old  who  have  been  here  long 
and  the  new  who  have  only  come;  be- 
tween the  home-land  of  our  fathers  and 
the  love-land  of  our  birth ;  and  it  would 
seem  as  though,  through  no  advantage 
of  wisdom  or  intellectual  knowledge  on 
our  part,  but  simply  as  the  result  of  the 
accident  of  our  position  and  of  our  dou- 
ble affections,  we  are  fitted  to  fulfil  a 
certain  function  at  the  present  day,  to 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.          95 

stand,  as  it  were,  as  mediators  and  in- 
terpreters between  those  our  position 
compels  us  to  sympathize  with  and  so 
understand,  as  they  may  not,  perhaps, 
be  able  to  understand  each  other. 

Especially  at  the  present  moment  has 
arrived  a  time  when  it  is  essential  that, 
however  small  we  may  feel  is  our  in- 
herent fitness  for  the  task,  we  should 
not  shrink  nor  remain  silent  and  in- 
active, but  exert  by  word  and  action 
that  peculiar  function  which  our  posi- 
tion invests  us  with. 

*       *       * 

If  it  be  asked,  why  at  this  especial 
moment  we  feel  it  incumbent  on  us  not 
to  maintain  silence,  and  what  that  is 
which  compels  our  action  and  speech, 
the  answer  may  be  given  in  one  word — 
WAR! 

The  air  of  South  Africa  is 


96          THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 
HEAVY  WITH  RUMORS; 

inconceivable,  improbable,  we  refuse  to 
believe  them ;  yet,  again  and  again  they 
return. 

There  are  some  things  the  mind  re- 
fuses seriously  to  entertain,  as  the  man 
who  has  long  loved  and  revered  his 
mother  would  refuse  to  accept  the  as- 
sertion of  the  first  passer-by  that  there 
was  any  possibility  of  her  raising  up 
her  hand  to  strike  his  wife  or  destroy 
his  child.  But  much  repetition  may  at 
last  awaken  doubt;  and  the  man  may 
begin  to  look  out  anxiously  for  further 

evidence. 

*       *       * 

We  English  South  Africans  are 
stunned ;  we  are  amazed ;  we  say  there 
can  be  no  truth  in  it.  Yet  we  begin  to 
ask  ourselves :  "What  means  this  un- 
wonted tread  of  armed  and  hired  sol- 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.          97 

diers  on  South  African  soil  ?  Why  are 
they  here?"  And  the  only  answer  that 
comes  back  to  us,  however  remote  and 
seemingly  impossible  is — WAR ! 

To-night  we  laugh  at  it,  and  to-mor- 
row when  we  rise  up  it  stands  before  us 
again,  the  ghastly  doubt — war! — war, 
and  in  South  Africa!  War — between 
white  men  and  white !  War! — Why? — 
Whence  is  the  cause? — For  whom? — 
For  what  ? — And  the  question  gains  no 
answer. 

We  fall  to  considering,  who  gains  by 
war? 

Has  our  race  in  Africa  and  our  race 
in  England  interests  so  diverse  that  any 
calamity  so  cataclysmic  can  fall  upon 
us,  as  war?  Is  any  position  possible, 
that  could  make  necessary  that  mother 
and  daughter  must  rise  up  in  one  hor- 
rible embrace,  and  rend,  if  it  be  pos- 


98          THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 

sible,  each  other's  vitals?  .  .  Be- 
lieving it  impossible,  we  fall  to  consid- 
ering, who  is  it  gains  by  war  ? 

There  is  peace  to-day  in  the  land ;  the 
two  great  white  races,  day  by  day,  hour 
by  hour,  are  blending  their  blood,  and 
both  are  mixing  with  the  stranger.  No 
day  passes  but  from  the  veins  of  some 
Dutch  South  African  woman  the  Eng- 
lish South  African  man's  child  is  being 
fed ;  not  a  week  passes  but  the  birth  cry 
of  the  English  South  African  woman's 
child  gives  voice  to  the  Dutchman's  off- 
spring; not  an  hour  passes  but  on  farm, 
and  in  town  and  village,  Dutch  hearts 
are  winding  about  English 

AND   ENGLISH    ABOUT  DUTCH. 

If  the  Angel  of  Death  should  spread  his 
wings  across  the  land  and  strike  dead 
in  one  night  every  man  and  woman  and 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.  99 

child  of  either  the  Dutch  or  the  English 
blood,  leaving  the  other  alive,  the  land 
would  be  a  land  of  mourning.  There 
would  be  not  one  household  nor  the 
heart  of  an  African  born  man  or  wo- 
man that  would  not  be  weary  with  grief. 
We  should  weep  the  friends  of  our 
childhood,  the  companions  of  our  early 
life,  our  grandchildren,  our  kindred,  the 
souls  who  have  loved  us  and  whom  we 
have  loved.  In  destroying  the  one  race 
he  would  have  isolated  the  other.  Time, 
the  great  healer  of  all  differences,  is 
blending  us  into  a  great  mutual  people, 
and  love  is  moving  faster  than  time.  It 
is  no  growing  hatred  between  Dutch 
and  English  South  African  born  men 
and  women  that  calls  for  war.  On  the 
lips  of  our  babes  we  salute  both  races 
daily. 
Then  we  look  round  through  the  po- 


100        THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 

litical  world,  and  we  ask  ourselves : 
What  great  and  terrible  and  sudden 
crime  has  been  committed,  what  reck- 
less slaughter  and  torture  of  the  inno- 
cents, that  blood  can  alone  wash  out 
blood? 

And  we  find  none. 

And  still  we  look,  asking  what  great 
and  terrible  difference  has  suddenly 
arisen,  so  mighty  that  the  human  intel- 
lect cannot  solve  it  by  means  of  peace, 
that  the  highest  and  noblest  diplomacy 
falls  powerless  before  it,  and  the  wis- 
dom and  justice  of  humanity  cannot 
reach  it,  save  by  the  mother's  drawing 
a  sword  and  planting  it  in  the  heart  of 
the  daughter  ? 

We  can  find  none. 

And  again,  we  ask  ourselves 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.         101 
WHO  GAINS  BY  WAR? 

What  is  it  for  ?  Who  is  there  that  de- 
sires it?  Do  men  shed  streams  of  hu- 
man blood  as  children  cut  off  poppy- 
heads  to  see  the  white  juice  flow? 

WHO  GAINS  BY  WAR? 

Not  England !  She  has  a  great  young 
nation's  heart  to  lose.  She  has  a  cable 
of  fellowship  which  stretches  across  the 
seas  to  rupture.  She  has  treaties  to  vio- 
late. She  has  the  great  traditions  of  her 
past  to  part  with.  Whoever  plays  to 
win,  she  loses. 

WHO  GAINS  BY  WAR? 

Not  Africa !  The  great  young  nation, 
quickening  to-day  to  its  first  conscious- 
ness of  life,  to  be  torn  and  rent,  and 
bear  upon  its  limb,  into  its  fully  ripened 
manhood,  the  marks  of  the  wounds — 
wounds  from  a  mother's  hands ! 


102        THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 
WHO  GAINS  BY  WAR? 

Not  the  great  woman  whose  eighty 
years  to-night  completes,*  who  would 
carry  with  her  to  her  grave  the  remem- 
brance of  the  longest  reign  and  the  pur- 
est ;  who  would  have  that  when  the  na- 
tions gather  round  her  bier,  the  whisper 
should  go  round,  "That  was  a  mother's 
hand;  it  struck  no  child." 

WHO  GAINS  BY  WAR? 

Not  the  brave  English  soldier ;  there 
are  no  laurels  for  them  here.  The  dy- 
ing lad  with  hands  fresh  from  the 
plough;  the  old  man  tottering  to  the 
grave,  who  seizes  up  the  gun  to  die  with 
it;  the  simple  farmer  who  as  he  falls 
hears  yet  his  wife's  last  whisper,  "For 
freedom  and  our  land !"  and  dies  hear- 
ing it — these  men  can  bind  no  laurels  on 

*  Written  on  24th  May,  1899. 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.        103 

a  soldier's  brow !  They  may  be  shot,  not 
conquered — fame  rests  with  them.  Go, 
gallant  soldiers  and  defend  the  shores 
of  that  small  island  that  we  love ;  there 
are  no  laurels  for  you  here ! 

WHO  GAINS  BY  WAR? 

Not  we  the  Africans,  whose  hearts 
are  knit  to  England.  We  love  all.  Each 
hired  soldier's  bullet  that  strikes  down 
a  South  African,  does  more ;  it  finds  a 
billet  here  in  our  hearts.  It  takes  one 
African's  life — in  another  it  kills  that 
which  will  never  live  again. 

WHO  GAINS  BY  WAR? 

There  are  some  who  think  they  gain ! 
In  the  background  we  catch  sight  of 
misty  figures;  we  know  the  old  tread; 
we  hear  the  rustle  of  paper,  passing 
from  hand  to  hand,  and  we  know  the 


104        THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 

fall  of  gold ;  it  is  an  old  familiar  sound 
in  Africa;  we  know  it  now!  There  are 
some  who  think  they  gain!  Will  they 
gain? 

But  it  may  be  said,  "What  matter 
who  goads  England  on,  or  in  whose 
cause  she  undertakes  war  against  Afri- 
cans; this  at  least  is  certain,  she  can 
win.  We  have  the  ships,  we  have  the 
men,  we  have  the  money." 

We  answer,  "Yes,  might  generally 
conquers — for  a  time  at  least."  The 
greatest  empire  upon  earth,  on  which 
the  sun  never  sets,  with  its  five  hundred 
million  subjects,  may  rise  up  in  its  full 
majesty  of  power  and  glory,  and  crush 
thirty  thousand  farmers.  It  may  not 
be  a  victory,  but  at  least  it  will  be 
a  slaughter.  We  ought  to  win.  We 
have  the  ships,  we  have  the  men,  and 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.        105 

we  have  the  money.  May  there  not  be 
something  else  we  need?  The  Swiss 
had  it  when  they  fought  with  Austria ; 
the  three  hundred  had  it  at  Thermopy- 
lae, although  not  a  man  was  saved;  it 
goes  to  make  a  victory.  Is  it  worth 
fighting  if  we  have  not  got  it  ? 

I  suppose  there  is  no  man  who  to-day 
loves  his  country  who  has  not  perceived 
that  in  the  life  of  the  nation,  as  in  the 
life  of  the  individual,  the  hour  of  ex- 
ternal success  may  be  the  hour  of  irrev- 
ocable failure,  and  that  the  hour  of 
death,  whether  to  nations  or  individ- 
uals, is  often  the  hour  of  immortality. 
When  William  the  Silent,  with  his  little 
band  of  Dutchmen,  rose  up  to  face  the 
whole  Empire  of  Spain,  I  think  there  is 
no  man  who  does  not  recognize  that  the 
hour  of  their  greatest  victory  was  not 
when  they  had  conquered  Spain,  and 


106        THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 

hurled  backward  the  greatest  Empire  of 
the  world  to  meet  its  slow  imperial 
death;  it  was  the  hour  when  that  little 
band  stood  alone  with  the  waters  over 

their  homes, 

\ 

FACING  DEATH  AND  DESPAIR, 

and  stood,  facing  it.  It  is  that  hour 
that  has  made  Holland  immortal,  and 
her  history  the  property  of  all  human 
hearts. 

It  may  be  said,  "But  what  has  Eng- 
land to  fear  in  a  campaign  with  a  coun- 
try like  Africa  ?  Can  she  not  send  out 
a  hundred  thousand  or  a  hundred  and 
fifty  thousand  men  and  walk  over  the 
land  ?  She  can  sweep  it  by  mere  num- 
bers." We  answer  yes — she  might  do 
it.  Might  generally  conquers;  not  al- 
ways. (I  have  seen  a  little  muur  kat 
attacked  by  a  mastiff,  the  first  joint  of 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.        107 

whose  leg  it  did  not  reach.  I  have  seen 
it  taken  in  the  dog's  mouth,  so  that 
hardly  any  part  of  it  was  visible,  and 
thought  the  creature  was  dead.  But  it 
fastened  its  tiny  teeth  inside  the  dog's 
throat,  and  the  mastiff  dropped  it,  and, 
mauled  and  wounded  and  covered  with 
gore  and  saliva,  I  saw  it  creep  back  into 
its  hole  in  the  red  African  earth.)  But 
might  generally  conquers,  and  there  is 
no  doubt  that  England  might  send  out 
sixty  or  a  hundred  thousand  hired  sol- 
diers to  South  Africa,  and  they  could 
bombard  our  towns  and  destroy  our  vil- 
lages; they  could  shoot  down  men  in 
the  prime  of  life,  and  old  men  and  boys, 
till  there  was  hardly  a  kopje  in  the 
country  without  its  stain  of  blood,  and 
the  Karoo  bushes  grew  up  greener  on 
the  spot  where  men  from  the  midlands, 
who  had  come  to  help  their  fellows,  fell, 


108        THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 

never  to  go  home.  I  suppose  it  would 
be  quite  possible  for  the  soldiers  to 
shoot  all  male  South  Africans  who  ap- 
peared in  arms  against  them.  It  might 
not  be  easy,  a  great  many  might  fall, 
but  a  great  Empire  could  always  import 
more  to  take  their  places ;  we  could  not 
import  more,  because  it  would  be  our 
husbands  and  sons  and  fathers  who 
were  falling,  and  when  they  were  done 
we  could  not  produce  more.  Then  the 
war  would  be  over.  There  would  not 
be  a  house  in  Africa — where  African- 
born  men  and  women  lived — without 
its  mourners,  from  Sea  Point  to  the 
Limpopo;  but  South  Africa  would  be 
pacified — as  Cromwell  pacified  Ireland 
three  centuries  ago,  and  she  has  been 
being  pacified  ever  since!  As  Virginia 
was  pacified  in  1677 ;  its  handful  of  men 
and  women  in  defence  of  their  freedom 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.        109 

were  soon  silenced  by  hired  soldiers.  "I 
care  that  for  the  power  of  England," 
said  "a  notorious  and  wicked  rebel" 
called  Sarah  Drummond,  as  she  took  a 
small  stick  and  broke  it  and  lay  it  on 
the  ground.  A  few  months  later  her 
husband  and  all  the  men  with  him  were 
made  prisoners,  and  the  war  was  over. 
"I  am  glad  to  see  you,"  said  Berkely, 
the  English  Governor,  "I  have  long 
wished  to  meet  you ;  you  will  be  hanged 
in  half  an  hour!"  and  he  was  hanged 
and  twenty-one  others  with  him,  and 
Virginia  was  pacified.  But  a  few  gen- 
erations later  in  that  State  of  Virginia 
was  born  George  Washington,  and  on 
the  i Qth  of  April,  17/5,  was  fought  the 
battle  of  Lexington — "Where  once 
the  embattled  farmers  stood,  and  fired 
a  shot,  heard  round  the  world," — and 
the  greatest  crime  and  the  greatest  folly 


110       THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 

of  England's  career  was  completed. 
England  acknowledges  it  now.  A  hun- 
dred or  a  hundred  and  fifty  thousand 
imported  soldiers  might  walk  over 
South  Africa ;  it  would  not  be  an  easy 
walk ;  but  it  could  be  done.  Then  from 
east  and  west  and  north  and  south 
would  come  men  of  pure  English  blood 
to  stand  beside  the  boys  they  had  played 
with  at  school  and  the  friends  they  had 
loved ;  and  a  great  despairing  cry  would 
rise  from  the  heart  of  Africa.  But  we 
are  still  few.  When  the  war  was  over 
the  imported  soldiers  might  leave  the 
land — not  all ;  some  must  be  left  to  keep 
the  remaining  people  down.  There 
would  be  quiet  in  the  land.  South  Af- 
rica would  rise  up  silently,  and  count 
her  dead,  and  bury  them.  She  would 
know  the  places  where  she  found  them. 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.        Ill 

South  Africa  would  be  peaceful.  There 
would  be  silence,  the  silence  of  a  long 
exhaustion — but  not  peace!  Have  the 
dead  no  voices?  In  a  thousand  farm 
houses  black  robed  women  would  hold 
memory  of  the  count,  and  outside  under 
African  stones  would  lie  the  African 
men  to  whom  South  African  women 
gave  birth  under  our  blue  sky.  There 
would  be  silence,  but  no  peace. 

You  say  that  all  the  fighting  men  in 
arms  might  have  been  shot.  Yes,  but 
what  of  the  women  ?  If  there  were  left 
but  five  thousand  pregnant  South  Afri- 
can-l?orn  women,  and  all  the  rest  of 
their  people  destroyed,  those  women 
would  breed  up  again  a  race  like  to  the 
first. 

OH,   LION-HEART  OF   THE   NORTH, 

do  you  not  recognize  your  own  lineage 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 


in  these  whelps  of  the  South  ?    We  can- 
not live  if  we  are  not  free  ! 

The  grandchildren  and  great-grand- 
children of  the  men  who  lay  under  the 
stones  (who  will  not  be  English  then 
nor  Dutch,  but  only  Africans),  will  say, 
as  they  pass  those  heaps  :  "There  lie 
our  fathers,  or  great-grandfathers  who 
died  in  the  first  great  War  of  Indepen- 
dence," and  the  descendants  of  the  men 
who  lay  there  will  be  the  aristocracy  of 
Africa.  Men  will  count  back  to  them 
and  say  :  My  father  or  my  great-grand- 
father lay  in  one  of  those  graves.  We 
shall  know  no  more  of  Dutch  or  Eng- 
lish then,  we  shall  know  only  one  great 
African  people.  And  we?  We,  the 
South  Africans  of  to-day,  who  are  still 
English,  who  have  been  proud  to  do  the 
smallest  good  so  it  might  bring  honor 
to  England,  who  have  vowed  our  vows 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.       1 13 

on  the  honor  of  Englishmen,  and  by  the 
faith  of  Englishmen — what  of  us? 

What  of  us  ?  We,  too,  have  had  our 
vision  of  Empire.  We  have  seen  as 
in  a  dream  the  Empire  of  England  as  a 
great  banyan  tree ;  silently  with  the  fall- 
ing of  the  dew  and  the  dropping  of  the 
rain  it  has  extended  itself ;  its  branches 
have  drooped  down  and  rooted  them- 
selves in  the  earth ;  in  it  all  the  fowl  of 
Heaven  have  taken  refuge,  and  under 
its  shade  all  the  beasts  of  the  field  have 
lain  down  to  rest.  Can  we  change  it  for 
an  upas  tree,  whose  leaves  distill  poison 
and  which  spells  death  to  those  who 
have  lain  down  in  peace  under  its 
shadow  ? 

You  have  no  right  to  take  our  dream 
from  us ;  you  have  no  right  to  kill  our 
faith !  Of  all  the  sins  England  will  sin 


114        THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 

if  she  makes  war  on  South  Africa,  the 
greatest  will  be  towards  us. 

Of  what  importance  is  the  honor  and 
faith  we  have  given  her  ?  You  say,  we 
are  but  few !  Yes,  we  are  few ;  but  all 
the  gold  of  Witwatersrand  would  not 
buy  one  throb  of  that  love  and  devotion 
we  have  given  her. 

Do  not  think  that  when  imported  sol- 
diers walk  across  South  African  plains 
to  take  the  lives  of  South  African  men 
and  women,  that  it  is  only  African  sand 
and  African  bushes  that  are  cracking 
beneath  their  tread:  at  each  step  they 
are  breaking  the  fibres,  invisible  as  air, 
but  strong  as  steel,  which  bind  the 
hearts  of  South  Africans  to  England. 
Once  broken  they  can  never  be  made 
whole  again;  they  are  living  things; 
broken,  they  will  be  dead.  Each  bullet 
which  a  soldier  sends  to  the  heart  of  a 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.        115 

South  African  to  take  his  life,  wakes  up 
another  who  did  not  know  he  was  an 
African.  You  will  not  kill  us  with  your 
Lee-Metfords :  you  will  make  us.  There 
are  men  who  do  not  know  they  love  a 
Dutchman ;  but  the  first  three  hundred 
that  fall,  they  will  know  it. 

Do  not  say,  "But  you  are  English, 
you  have  nothing  to  fear :  we  have  no 
war  with  you !" 

There  are  hundreds  of  us,  men  and 
women,  who  have  loved  England;  we 
would  have  given  our  lives  for  her ;  but, 
rather  than  strike  down  one  South  Af- 
rican man  fighting  for  freedom,  we 
would  take  this  right  hand  and  hold  it 
in  the  fire,  till  nothing  was  left  of  it  but 
a  charred  and  blackened  bone. 

I  know  of  no  more  graphic  image  in 
the  history  of  the  world  than 


116       THB  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 
THE  FIGURE  OF  FRANKLIN 

when  he  stood  before  the  Lords  of 
Council  in  England,  giving  evidence, 
striving,  fighting,  to  save  America  for 
England.  Browbeaten,  flouted,  jeered 
at  by  the  courtiers,  his  words  hurled 
back  at  him  as  lies,  he  stood  there  fight- 
ing for  England.  England  recognizes 
now  that  it  was  he  who  tried  to  save  an 
Empire  for  her ;  and  that  the  men  who 
flouted  and  browbeat  him,  lost  it.  There 
is  nothing  more  pathetic  than  the  way 
in  which  Americans  who  loved  Eng- 
land, Washington  and  Franklin,  strove 
to  keep  the  maiden  vessel  moored  close 
to  the  mother's  side,  bound  by  the  bonds 
of  love  and  sympathy,  that  alone  could 
bind  them.  Their  hands  were  beaten 
down,  bruised  and  bleeding,  wounded 
by  the  very  men  they  came  to  save,  till 
they  let  go  the  mother  ship  and  drifted 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.        117 

away  on  their  own  great  imperial  course 
across  the  seas  of  time. 

England  knows  now  what  those  men 
strove  to  do  for  her,  and  the  names  of 
Washington  and  Franklin  will  ever 
stand  high  in  honor  where  the  English 
tongue  is  spoken.  The  names  of  Hutch- 
inson,  and  North,  and  Grafton  are  not 
forgotten  also;  it  might  be  well  for 
them  if  they  were! 

Do  not  say  to  us :  "You  are  English- 
men; when  the  war  is  over,  you  can 
wrap  the  mantle  of  our  imperial  glory 
round  you  and  walk  about  boasting  that 
the  victory  is  yours." 

We  could  never  wrap  that  mantle 
round  us  again.  We  have  worn  it  with 
pride.  We  could  never  wear  it  then. 
There  would  be  blood  upon  it,  and  the 
blood  would  be  our  brothers'. 

We  put  it  to  the  men  of  England. 


118       THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 

In  that  day  where  should  we  be  found ; 
we  who  have  to  maintain  English  hon- 
or in  the  South  ?  Judge  for  us,  and  by 
your  judgment  we  will  abide.  Remem- 
ber, we  are  Englishmen ! 

***** 

Looking  around  to-day  along  the 
somewhat  over-clouded  horizon  of 
South  African  life,  one  figure  strikes  the 
eye,  new  to  the  circle  of  our  existence 
here ;  and  we  eye  it  with  something  of 
that  hope  and  sympathy  with  which  a 
man  is  bound  to  view  the  new  and  un- 
known, which  may  be  of  vast  possible 
good  and  beauty. 

What  have  we  in  this  man,  who  rep- 
resents English  honor  and  English  wis- 
dom in  South  Africa  ?  To  a  certain  ex- 
tent we  know. 

We  have  a  man  honorable  in  the  re- 
lations of  personal  life,  loyal  to  friend, 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.        119 

and  above  all  charm  of  gold ;  wise  with 
the  knowledge  of  books  and  men;  a 
man  who  could  not  violate  a  promise 
or  strike  in  the  dark.  This  we  know  we 
have,  and  it  is  much  to  know  this ;  but 
what  have  we  more? 

The  man  of  whom  South  Africa  has 
need  to-day  to  sustain  England's  honor 
and  her  Empire  of  the  future,  is  a  man 
who  must  possess  more  than  the  knowl- 
edge and  wisdom  of  the  intellect. 

When  a  woman  rules  a  household 
with  none  but  the  children  of  her  own 
body  in  it,  her  task  is  easy ;  let  her  obey 
nature  and  she  will  not  fail.  But  the 
woman  who  finds  herself  in  a  large 
strange  household,  where  children  and 
step-children  are  blended,  and  where 
all  have  passed  the  stage  of  childhood 
and  have  entered  on  that  stage  of 
adolescence  where  coercion  can  no  more 


120       THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 

avail,  but  where  sympathy  and  compre- 
hension are  the  more  needed,  that  wo- 
man has  need  of  large  and  rare  qualities 
springing  more  from  the  heart  than 
from  the  head.  She  who  can  win  the 
love  of  her  strange  household  in  its 
adolescence  will  keep  its  loyalty  and 
sympathy  when  adult  years  are  reached 
and  will  be  rich  indeed. 

There  have  been  Englishmen  in  Af- 
rica who  had  those  qualities.  Will 

THIS    NEW    ENGLISHMAN    OF   OURS 

evince  them  and  save  an  Empire  for 
England  and  heal  South  Africa's 
wounds?  Are  we  asking  too  much 
when  we  turn  our  eyes  with  hope  to 
him? 

Further  off  also,  across  the  sea  we 
look  with  hope.  The  last  of  the  race  of 
great  statesmen  was  not  put  into  the 


THE  Soi'TH  AFRICAN  QUESTION,        121 

ground  with  the  old  man  of  Hawar- 
den;  the  great  breed  of  Chatham  and 
Burke  is  not  extinct;  the  hour  must 
surely  bring  forth  the  man. 

We  look  further  yet  with  confidence, 
from  the  individual  to  the  great  heart 
of  England,  the  people.  The  great 
fierce  freedom-loving  heart  of  England 
is  not  dead  yet.  Under  a  thin  veneer 
of  gold  we  still  hear  it  beat.  Behind  the 
shrivelled  and  puny  English  Hyde  who 
cries  only  "gold,"  rises  the  great  Eng- 
lish Jekyll,  who  cries  louder  yet  "Jus- 
tice and  honor."  We  appeal  to  him; 
history  shall  not  repeat  itself. 

Nearer  home,  we  turn  to  one  whom 
all  South  Africans  are  proud  of,  and 
we  would  say  to  Paul  Kruger,  "Great 
old  man,  first  but  not  last  of  South 
Africa's  great  line  of  rulers,  you  have 
shown  us  you  could  fight  for  freedom ; 


122       THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION. 

show  us  you  can  win  peace.  On  the 
foot  of  that  great  statue  which  in  the 
future  the  men  and  women  of  South 
Africa  will  raise  to  you  let  this  stand 
written:  'This  man  loved  freedom, 
and  fought  for  it;  but  his  heart  was 
large ;  he  could  forget  injuries  and  deal 
generously.' ' 

And  to  our  fellow  Dutch  South  Afri- 
cans, whom  we  have  learnt  to  love  so 
much  during  the  time  of  stress  and 
danger,  we  would  say :  "Brothers,  you 
have  shown  the  world  that  you  know 
how  to  fight ;  show  it  you  know  how  to 
govern;  forget  the  past;  in  that  Great 
Book  which  you  have  taken  for  your 
guide  in  life,  turn  to  Leviticus,  and 
read  there  in  the  iQth  chapter,  34th 
verse:  'But  the  stranger  that  dwelleth 
with  you  shall  be  unto  you  as  one  born 
among  you,  and  thou  shalt  love  him  as 


THE  SOUTH  AFRICAN  QUESTION.        123 

thyself;  for  ye  were  strangers  in  the 
land  of  Egypt.  I  am  the  Lord  your 
God.' " 

Be  strong,  be  fearless,  be  patient. 

We  would  say  to  you  in  the  words 
of  the  wise  dead  President  of  the  Free 
State  which  have  become  the  symbol 
of  South  Africa,  "Wacht  een  beetje> 
alles  sal  recht  kom."  (Wait  a  little, 
all  will  come  right.) 

On  our  great  African  flag  let  us  em- 
blazon these  words,  never  to  take  them 
down,  "FREEDOM,  JUSTICE, 
LOVE";  great  are  the  two  first,  but 
without  the  last  they  are  not  complete. 

Olive  Schreiner, 

2  Primrose  Terrace, 
Berea  Estate, 
Johannesburg, 
June,  1899.  South  African  Republic. 


HISTORY  OF  BOHEMIA, 

by  Robert  H.  Vickers, 
8vo,  Cloth  with  map  and  illustrations,        $3.50 

Endorsed  by  the  Bohemians  of  America,  through  their 
national  organzation,  as  the  most  complete,  accurate, 
and  sympathetic  narrative  of  their  country's  history 
in  English. 

In  the  compilation  of  his  stiring  narative  Mr. 
Vickers  has  availed  himself  largely  of  material 
derived  from  native  scources,  and  he  deserves 
the  thanks  of  English-reading  students  for  hav- 
ing compressed  so  much  substance  into  a  single 
book. —  The  Nation. 

Mr.  Vickers  has  rendered  a  great  service  to 
Bohemia  in  this  work,  and  has  evidently  spared 
no  pains  to  make  it  valuable. — Boston  Herald. 

As  a  contribution  to  general  historical  litera- 
ture, Mr.  Vickers' volume  is  an  important  event. 
— Chicago  Evening  Post. 

Robert  H.  Vickers  has  rendered  a  lasting  ser- 
vice to  the  Bohemian  residents  in  America  * 
*  *  The  body  of  the  work  bears  every 
evidence  of  being  a  thorough  and  valuable  con- 
tribution to  Bohemian  history.  It  is  a  work 
which  fills  a  field  hitherto  altogether  unoccupied. 
— Chicago  Evening  Journal. 


CHARLES  H.  SERGEL  COMPANY, 

PUBLISHERS,  CHICAGO. 


HISTORY  OF  PERU, 

by  Clements  R.  Markham, 

C.  B. ,  F.  R.  S.,  P.  S.  A., President  Hakluyt  Society,  Presi- 
dent Royal  Geographical  Society,  and  author  of  "Cuzco 
and  Lima,"  "Peru  and  India,"  etc. 

8  vo,  cloth,  with  maps  and  illustrations,   $  2.50. 

The  highest  authority  on  Peruvian  history. — 
The  Critic. 

Mr.  Markham  has  done  his  work  well,  and 
with  ardent  love  for  his  subject.  The  country  is 
a  favorite  one  with  him,  and  has  furnished 
him  with  matter  for  three  monographs  before 
the  present  history.  In  a  necessarily  limited 
space  he  has  given  the  leading  facts,  and  taken 
a  comprehensive  view  from  the  earliest  time, 
down  almost  to  the  current  year.  Not  the  least 
interesting  portions  are  the  brief  but  strongly 
individual  sketches  of  some  of  the  remarkable 
men  who  have  figured  in  the  annals  of  Peru.  In 
a  few  virile  paragraphs  he  presents  the  more 
famous  generals,  viceroys,  presidents  and  pat- 
riots, The  book  is  well  equipped  with  maps, 
abounds  with  pictures,  and  has  an  appendix 
rich  in  its  statistics  and  important  documents. 
—  The  Literary  World. 

Mr.  Markham  is  thoroughly  at  home  with  his 
subject.  He  possesses  a  strong,  graphic  style 
eminently  suited  to  it,  and  the  amount  of  in- 
formation that  he  has  managed  to  crowd  into 
the  space  at  his  disposal  is  simply  marvelous. — 
New  Orleans  Picayune. 

CHARLES  H.  SERGEI*  COMPANY, 

PUBLISHERS,  CHICAGO. 


HISTORY  OF  CHILE, 

by  Anson  Uriel  Hancock, 

Author  of   "Old  Abraham  Jackson,"    "Coitlan,  A  Tale  of 
the  I nca  World,"  etc. 

8vo,  Cloth,  with  map  and  illustrations,  $2.50 
It  has  been  Mr.  Hancock's  endeavour  to  give 
a  "complete  short  history  and  picture  of  Chile 
in  a  single  volume."  We  may  congratulate  him 
on  having  achieved  his  design.  Mr.  Hancock's 
virtures  are  those  of  painstaking  chronicler. 
And  he  has  those  virtues  in  full  quantity.  Not 
that  the  author  is  without  dramatic  power.  The 
concluding  chapters  of  this  valuable  book  on  the 
ethnology,  geology,  agriculture,  communica- 
tions, and  resources  of  Chile  are  of  great  in- 
terest.— London  Saturday  Review. 

Within  the  compass  of  less  than  500  octavo 
pages  the  author  gives  a  succinct  and  rapid  nar« 
rative  of  the  history  of  Chile,  its  institutionss, 
the  character  of  its  people,  and  its  present  con- 
ditions, resources  and  outlook.  He  has  made  a 
painstaking  examination  of  authorities,  and  has 
preserved  a  due  sense  of  proportion. — Boston 
Journal. 

It  is  on  the  period  between  the  years  1830  and 
1880,  however,  that  the  interest  of  the  reader 
will  concentrate  itself,  and  recognizing  this  fact 
Mr.  Hancock  has  spared  no  pains  in  rendering" 
this  part  of  the  work  the  most  brilliant  and  au- 
thentic. It  is  in  every  respect  a  thoroughly  read- 
able and  accurate  work,  dealing  with  the  history 
of  a  country  which  promises  to  be  of  much 
greater  importance  among  the  nations  of  the 
earth. — Philadelphia  Item. 

CHARLES  H.  SERGEL  COMPANY, 
PUBLISHERS,  CHICAGO, 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 

Los  Angeles 
This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


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